Warcraft: The Jeshua Tales
by allen.bair
Summary: Set during the events of my stories Warcraft: For Unto Us a Savior and Warcraft: Kingdom of Light, this is a collection of short stories continuing to tell the stories of Jeshua and his emissaries, and the effects those events had on other characters within Azeroth.
1. Chapter 1

Death Knight

In Tirisfal Glades Before the New Dawn…

The sky above him which could be seen through the canopy of sickly trees was darkened with perpetually thick gray clouds that blotted out the sunlight even in the middle of the day. It was an unforgiving gloom that lay across the entire forested landscape of red hills, rotting farms, and plagued animals. Tirisfal Glades was no longer a place suitable for the living, and even then, it was barely suitable for the unliving. Arthas had seen to that.

There was a time, another lifetime before the second war, when he and his sister Leryssa would spend their summers as children wandering through these same hills looking for any adventure they could find. That is, when they weren't helping with their family's farm. That farm now lay abandoned in the distance. The wood of its house and barns rotting and molding with the many years of dereliction and neglect. The ghosts of his past haunted its acreage both literally and figuratively.

Thassarian did not enjoy returning to the lands he had grown up on and called "home."

He did not fear the literal ghosts as much as he could empathize with them, even sharing their pain. But the figurative ghosts… He could not bring himself to set foot on that property again knowing what he knew. He could not bear to see her remains still there, likely reduced to nothing but bare bones by now. The wracking pains which tormented his body day and night if he did not give in to the blood lust innate to his "kind" were preferable to the memory of that day he had been forced to prove his loyalty to the Lich King, Arthas Menethil.

The day he had murdered his own mother in cold blood. That same cold blood spilling...

_No. I don't want to think on that now. I have a task to complete._ He chided himself.

His mouth tasted of ash and the coppery flavor of blood. It always tasted that way. Even when he tried to wash it away by downing the strongest dwarven rotgut he could find, he could never get away from it. It was a consequence of his unliving "condition." Unlike the Forsaken, his flesh did not rot from his bones, but his heart had ceased beating a long, long time ago all the same. Falric, the first Death Knight made by Arthas, had seen to that in Northrend. His skin remained an ashen white, and his hair and beard, exposed as he wore no helmet, had followed suit making him look far older than the young, virile soldier he had been at his death.

Rumors had reached the Ebon Hold that what remained of the Scarlet Crusade had begun attempting to reclaim their old haunts at the old monastery in the northern parts of Tirisfal Glades after being harassed and harried at their stronghold in New Hearthglen in Northrend over the last decade by both Alliance and Horde alike. As a response, the Deathlord, the right hand of the Lich King, had instructed him to confirm it and deal with them accordingly. Now he waited and observed from the hills uncomfortably close to his childhood home to see if the rumors were true, and if they were, to discourage their attempted "homecoming." Harshly.

The Scarlet Crusade were a plague upon Azeroth for both the undead and the living, attacking anyone who didn't see things their way whether they were Alliance or Horde. They had formed as remnants of Lordaeron's living forces bent on destroying the Scourge and driving them from Lordaeron. Neither he nor the Forsaken had any issue with destroying the remnants of Arthas' Scourge. The problem where the Scarlet Crusade were concerned was that no one could seem to get it through their heads that both Arthas and those Scourge who were under his control were now gone. They had been defeated years before through the combined efforts of both his own Order, the Knights of the Ebon Blade, and the Paladins of the Argent Crusade led by their Highlord, Tirion Fordring. The remaining undead on Azeroth, those who still had control of their own minds and wills, were either Forsaken undead, freed from the Lich King's will early on, or Death Knights like himself, in service either to the Alliance or Horde, or else quietly in service to the Lich King that, unknown to all else besides the deceased Paladin Highlord and the Death Knights themselves, took Arthas' place, Bolvar Fordragon.

Neither faction as a whole really wanted much else but to find or make some kind of peace with the unliving state they found themselves in. Sure, there were individuals among them that stirred up trouble. And to be fair, the incident at Light's Hope Chapel with Tirion Fordring's remains was a mistake on the part of his Lich King which had shattered what trust his brothers and sisters had earned with the Paladins forever. The Lich King, a former lord of Stormwind and hero of the Alliance, had wanted to honor the Highlord in his own way by raising his corpse as one of his new four horsemen. The Paladins were horrified by it however and reacted by defending their sanctum to the death. Ultimately, the Light itself had intervened and driven his brothers back in defeat, defending the sanctity of Tirion Fordring's remains. It was a misunderstanding of monumentally epic proportions.

He watched the scene in front of him for some time, still and silent as the grave, unseen among the shadows of the hills and cliffs. He could have just stormed into the monastery. He knew many of his brothers would have, uncaring who if anyone had begun to occupy the old convent. But Thassarian was not his brothers. For whatever reason, there was a part of him that still cared about the living. He cared about his sister Leryssa who was still very much alive and living in the Alliance stronghold of Valiance Keep in Northrend. Whatever gods that might be left bless her, she had come looking for him before Arthas' final defeat. He cared about his friend and brother Death Knight, Koltira Deathweaver, Sindorei though he might be. He cared about him enough to where, along with the Deathlord himself, he had challenged the full wrath of the Undercity and the Banshee Queen herself to free him from her clutches. And, in spite of their treatment of him, somewhere inside he still cared about the Alliance and his duty to its king, now the youth, Anduin Wrynn. He found himself caring now that he didn't just walk in and murder some foolish but innocent transients looking for shelter in an abandoned ruin. The innocence or guilt of his victims made a difference to him.

_All things considered, I've never been a very good Death Knight._ He mused to himself with an ironic grin.

After a while, his unnatural sight spied warm bodies moving just inside the broken and neglected arched doors of the monastery. He then saw what he came to see; scarlet hoods and cloaks over chain mail covering those warm, blood filled bodies. Every so often, living eyes would stare nervously out into the gloomy, darkened daylight keeping watch for any sign that their presence there had been noticed by those not living.

Thassarian sighed inwardly. He had seen maybe four or five men keeping watch at the entrance. There would be at least a hundred more inside most likely. The Scarlet Crusade were like those rodent creatures in Pandaria he had heard about. You just couldn't seem to exterminate them completely no matter what you did. You slaughtered ten, ten more would pop up elsewhere. He briefly considered just informing the Banshee Queen of their presence and letting the Forsaken deal with it, but he wasn't exactly in her good graces at the moment.

He slid his runeblades from their sheaths, the sound of the metal scraping as the blades came free to feed on living flesh and blood. Around him, the air temperature dropped dramatically as he used the powers of frost which his kind had been given and directed it towards the warm living bodies inside the doors. Some would call it foolish to give such an obvious warning to intended targets. But for the Death Knight, the terror it invoked only made the kills more satisfying. They would know death was coming, and there would be nothing they could do to stop it. He would feed on that terror, let it energize him and innervate him as he gutted them one by one, draining their very life's essence and letting their corpses rot on the ground. If he felt like it, he might reanimate some of the scarlet vermin and turn them against their living comrades for sport.

He stepped from the shadows, his black saronite plate armor, scarred from countless battles, seemed to absorb the darkness and carry it with him. He had no need to skulk in the shadows like a rogue assassin. He had no need to cower for fear of discovery. Those inside the monastery were the ones who would be cowering. He would make sure their blood would splatter the walls and their bones would litter the floors as a warning for their fellow "crusaders" to never return to Lordaeron.

Thassarian was Death incarnate, and he was coming for them.

What weeds and grasses there were on the ground beneath his armored boots withered and died from the cold death he projected as he marched deliberately and purposefully towards the monastery entry. He did not hurry. He wanted their terror to build and build as they realized they could do nothing to stop the fate he would inflict upon them.

It was then he realized he was actually looking forward, even hungrily, to the slaughter he was about to commit and revel in it as he drove towards the living flesh.

He heard gasps coming from inside the entry way on his approach, and then he heard shouts from inside as the men went into the panic he intended.

"What is that?!" One man's voice shouted. "The floor's frozen over!" Another announced. "What's going on?!" He heard a third yell, the man's voice rising from fear. And then he heard, "Death Knight! Death Knight!" screamed again and again by the men inside.

One by one the defenders in the entryway rushed out to meet him. They were all young men. No older than he had been when Falric had taken his life. They wore shabby chain and scale mail which had been cobbled together. They had, in all probability, looted it themselves from corpses inside the monastery in order to supplement what weapons and armor they possessed. They ran at him in a panic, swords and maces held high for the strike.

For just a moment, he felt pity for them. These men hadn't even been born when Lordaeron fell to the Lich King. They had been weaned on romanticized stories of the glories of the Scarlet Crusade against all the evil undead and those living humans who had dared to see them as anything other than Scourge. They had known nothing else for their entire lives. For just a moment, he considered sparing them.

Then that moment passed.

The first of the men never reached him as he reached out and siphoned his life's essence from his body. The soldier's corpse fell forward clumsily and hit the rocky ground of the unkempt road, carried by the inertia of his running. His unblinking eyes continued to stare in shock as his face hit the ground.

Thassarian raised a sword and pointed it at the next two and they were stopped in their tracks. They began to look uncomfortable at first, and then they began to scream for the pain as their skin began to blister with pustules of blood. They continued screaming until they fell to their knees as their blood boiled within them. And then their corpses dropped lifeless where they fell.

The fourth and fifth men behind them pulled themselves up short after seeing their comrades' demise and, in a brief moment of intelligence, turned and ran back for the imagined safety of the monastery. Thassarian sheathed one sword and reached out with his left hand. The man unlucky enough to be in the rear felt himself jerked backwards through the air by an unseen force where his neck landed in Thassarian's black, saronite gauntlet. A quick sword thrust ended his struggling and his corpse was cast aside into the dirt. Thassarian continued towards the entryway. None of these events broke his stride.

He let the fifth man reach the inside of the monastery and could hear his screams to the others inside recede as he announced the existential threat which came for them. It did not matter. There was always the small chance that those inside might be able to actually end his undeath permanently, but from what he had seen so far that chance was astronomically miniscule. There was no holy priest or Paladin guarding the entry like there might have been at one time among those he had killed. He remembered a time when the Scarlet Crusade had regularly employed deluded priests and Paladins who were convinced they were serving the Holy Light by torturing and destroying undead of any kind, even those who weren't fighters, and couldn't defend themselves at all. He felt no special love for the Forsaken, but he still couldn't abide the injustice of a defenseless tailor or farmer being tortured for no reason other than, like himself, he was another of the Scourge's hapless victims. Maybe under Arthas he might have felt differently, but Arthas was long gone, and Bolvar Fordragon, even though a Lich King, was not Arthas.

Without those Light wielders, no one inside would pose any kind of a real threat to him. It would be short work, and the Scarlet Crusade would learn a painful lesson.

He reached the doorway, both swords in his hands though he doubted he actually needed them for this work. When he did, he saw the figure of a woman in a scarlet robe cowering in terror on the marble stone floor. Her hood had been drawn back. She had a pretty face and shoulder length auburn hair. Her face was twisted in terror and streaked with tears. She looked to be in her late thirties or early forties. He stared at her, coldly debating on how he would end her life, but something about the scene disturbed him in ways he couldn't explain in that moment.

"Please don't kill me!" She begged. "Please! Holy Light help us!" She called out to her divinity. "Please! I didn't do anything! I don't want to die!"

Thassarian continued to stare at her. The scene looked familiar to him and images of another human woman, another murder in cold blood from decades before, flashed through his unliving mind. His urge to kill her was overwhelming, but for some reason, he just continued to stare at her, unable to move in any way to deliver the death stroke.

She went down to the floor, doubled over in terror as she sobbed. "Please… don't kill me..."

"What is your name, woman?" He then asked her, surprising himself more than the woman.

"My name?" She managed to ask, confused.

"Yes. I assume you have one." Thassarian answered. "Tell me."

She then raised herself to a position where she could look at him, though she was too scared to meet his eyes. She continued to weep as she answered, "Vivian..."

Thassarian took a step backwards. "What did you say?"

"Vivian… My name is Vivian… Please don't kill me!"

The Death Knight took another step backwards. "Why…? How…?" He felt dizzy and nauseous, and the face of that other woman he had murdered flashed through his mind again, forcing itself into his consciousness. His cold, inhuman eyes continued to stare at the woman, but his expression turned from the cold butchery which had been intended to one which was rarely if ever seen on a Death Knight's face.

Fear.

Fear, pain, and confusion clouded his expression as he heard the woman's name and the face from his memory merged with the woman's own until he could not tell if he was looking into the face of a stranger, or the face of… his own mother.

And then the woman heard words from the Death Knight never in her wildest imagination did she think she'd ever hear. Never in all her life had she stared Death itself in the face and had Death reply, "I'm sorry, mother. I'm so sorry."

The Death Knight sheathed his swords, and without another word turned and walked out of the entryway and didn't look back. The air grew warmer again, and all was silent except for the confused sobs of the woman whose life had been spared for no other reason than that her name was Vivian.

Thassarian wandered away from the monastery on foot not knowing where he was going or why. He walked for what seemed like hours, though he did not know how long it actually was. It seemed like his feet had a mind of his own as his head and what "heart" he still possessed went to war with each other and tried to process what had just happened. He found himself hallucinating as he saw images of a Draenei woman and a Night Elf man in old, travel worn clothing pass him by on the road headed up towards the very monastery he had just left. They might have given him greeting, but he didn't hear them if they did.

_Vivian. _He thought. _Her name was Vivian._

_What does that matter? Her life was nothing._ Another, feral voice intruded in his mind. _Just another weak victim for the slaughter._

The only answer he had was, _But her name was Vivian, and she was my mother._

Somewhere inside him he knew the woman hadn't been his mother, and yet he also knew that somehow she was, and he couldn't do it again. He couldn't kill her again. He wouldn't kill her again. Not for the Lich King he now served. Not for the Deathlord who had given him orders. Not for anyone.

He found himself in an abandoned farmhouse. He didn't know how long or how far he had walked, much less who might have seen him. Recognition of the place slowly dawned on him. He knew the old, decaying farmhouse very well having lived in it almost all of the years he had lived before his unlife.

With a kind of panic his eyes went to one wall knowing what he would see there. An old collection of human bones lay against it still covered by a cloth dress. The skin and soft tissues had long since rotted away, but fragments of auburn colored hair remained near the skull.

Thassarian's knees buckled and he went down hard on them in front of the remains.

"I'm sorry, mother. I'm so, so sorry." He told the remains as he knelt in front of them.

If he could have wept, he would have as the pain he carried, both physical and emotional welled up inside of him to the point where he could no longer stand it and he cried out in agony not caring who knew that he was there. Had they been wise, they would have stayed away. He continued to cry out in great wracking sobs where no tears could fall.

"What kind of a monster am I?" He asked aloud.

_You know exactly what kind of a monster you are, Death Knight. _The feral voice inside of him spoke loudly to his psyche.

"I didn't-" he began to retort. "I didn't ask to become this… this butcher."

There were many among his order who did for their own reasons. Those from the Paladin and Warrior classes who had become disillusioned with the Light, with life, or who were bloodthirsty by nature had sought out the Lich King during the Third War and after to join his elite force. After a time, Arthas ceased caring about who they were or where they came from in order to fill his ranks. There were brothers within his order from among all races on Azeroth.

But he had not been given the choice.

"I only wanted to serve my country and my king." He said out loud.

_And you did… You served the Lich King very well._ The voice taunted him. And then it began to laugh at him.

"I didn't ask for this." He repeated. And then he shouted it again, "I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS!"

_You are what you are, Death Knight. That will never, and can never change._ The voice told him.

And then he said words he never thought to say again, echoing the cry of the woman he had spared, his voice despairing of the possibility even as he said them, "Holy Light, help me, please."

"Hello?" A man's voice with the timbre of a Night Elf, hesitantly called from outside the house. "I heard someone crying out, is everything okay in there?"

Thassarian could hear, even feel the fear coming off of the man who had, in spite of his fear, called out to him. What was a Night Elf doing in Tirisfal Glades making his own presence known so loudly? Was he suicidal? Did he come to have the Death Knight end his life for him?

"Go away, Night Elf." Thassarian called back without moving from where he knelt. "You do not want to be here right now."

There was a silence for a few seconds, then the Night Elf responded, "Alright, but if you need anything I'll be up at the old monastery with my companion."

_The old monastery?_ He wondered. "You do not want to be there either, Night Elf. I just came from there, and must soon return to complete my task. I recommend you leave these lands altogether. It is not a fit place for you or your companion." He called back.

"I know. We raised those you killed. They're shaken, but alive now." The Night Elf responded, his voice taking on a slight tremble, though the Death Knight still did not hear him leave.

"Then you have made a serious mistake." Thassarian told him in response, finally rising from where he knelt. "One which I must now correct."

Around him, frost began to grow and cover the inside of the old farmhouse. Thassarian took one last look at his mother's remains and then turned and marched purposefully outside to see the obviously frightened but somehow still not retreating Night Elf.

The Night Elf wore the clothes of a scholar or scribe, and was barefoot. He carried no staff, no dagger, no weapon of any kind. There was nothing about him to indicate he was one of the priests of the goddess they worshipped, Elune. Neither did he wear any sigils which would suggest he was a member of the Scarlet Crusade, or any order of holy priests. He looked like little more than a homeless vagabond. There was nothing about the man that suggested he could even handle himself in a fight. The incongruence with his statement about raising those Thassarian had slaughtered was striking and gave the Death Knight pause.

"Who are you, Night Elf? Why are you here?" Thassarian asked.

The fear radiating off of the man increased intensely as Thassarian stood before him in his full armor, and for several seconds it looked as if he could not answer him. The words simply would not come.

_Kill him and be done with it. He is nothing._ The feral voice spoke inside Thassarian, but he chose to ignore it even as everything within him wanted to do nothing more than follow it.

"Speak, or you die here." The Death Knight said, not as a threat, but as a fact.

Finally, the Elf managed to find his voice, "M- my name is Amerian. I- I'm an emissary of Jeshua Lightborn. H- he sent me to..."

"Who?" Thassarian asked. "I do not know this 'Jeshua Lightborn.'"

_Kill him, Thassarian. Now. Revel in his bloody corpse._ The feral voice insisted more strongly.

"He- he is my Shan'do. He has the power to restore the undead to true life. I have seen it with my own eyes many times." Amerian told him. "He sent us to do the same to whoever might want it."

Thassarian paused once more. He was silent for a few seconds as he tried to process what the Night Elf had said. Then he laughed at the ridiculousness of it. He laughed so hard his whole body shook from it and his armor creaked.

"That's..." He tried to say as he laughed. "That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, Night Elf. You could have come up with a more believable story to keep your death at bay. Nothing can reverse the undeath. Everyone knows that."

"Every word is the truth, I swear. If you don't believe me, go to Hearthglen and see him yourself." Amerian replied.

"Hearthglen?" Thassarian asked. Hearthglen was under the control of the Argent Crusade, and by extension the Order of the Silver Hand. He would no more be welcome there than among those reoccupying the old monastery.

"Yes, the Shan'do is at Hearthglen. Go there and see if what I say is untrue." The Night Elf insisted.

"You're insane, Night Elf. Killing you would be doing you a favor." Thassarian told him.

"I would have said the same not long ago." The Night Elf replied. "Go to Hearthglen. Many of the Forsaken already have, including those at the monastery you attacked."

"Those were humans wearing the colors of the Scarlet Crusade." Thassarian retorted.

"They were all Forsaken weeks ago." The Night Elf told him in response. "I saw the Shan'do restore many of them myself. I was there when he did it."

_He lies. You know his story is impossible. Just kill him and be done with it._ Those voice urged him. But something inside of him still resisted.

"Why did you come here, to this rotting farm?" Thassarian then asked him.

"I- I don't know. I saw you on the road and… and I felt compelled to follow after you after we saw what happened at the monastery. I felt like I needed to speak with you; like the Holy Light was compelling me to find you." Amerian told him.

"No one seeks to speak with one of my kind, Night Elf, not willingly." The Death Knight told him.

"The Holy Light wanted me to." The Night Elf told him, finding his voice a little less timid. "I know it did."

Thassarian considered the Night Elf's words carefully. He was obviously insane. That much appeared to be certain. But he was also obviously no real threat to the Death Knight, and Thassarian had no desire to spill the blood of a harmless lunatic who believed he was helping him somehow.

"Go, Night Elf. You have said your peace. Now, leave this place and do not return." Thassarian finally told him.

Amerian looked at him for a few seconds more, then nodded and turned to leave back the way he came. Thassarian watched as the Night Elf walked back down the unpaved, overgrown farm road until he disappeared. His own thoughts disturbed in his head.

_It's not possible. The man is a lunatic._ He told himself silently. _And yet…_ He wasn't sure how to finish that thought. Could he even consider the possibility regardless of how remote it was? The more the idea ran through his mind, the more uncertain he became, and the more he could not dismiss it. Finally he allowed himself to express the impossible.

"What if it's true?" He asked aloud.

He was met with the deathly silence which had become native to those lands.

Thassarian cast his eyes once more towards where he knew the monastery and its new inhabitants lie. His orders had been to slaughter them. He had not been given a time frame, and it was unlikely a day or so would make a difference. If there was such a man capable of restoring the undead, the Deathlord and the Lich King would want to know if they did not already. He would need to be certain before proceeding.

He withdrew one of his runeblades and slashed at the air in front of him, utilizing the runes to open the veil of death and create a portal through the shadowlands to where he desired to go. In this case, Hearthglen. The Death Gate opened and Thassarian stepped through.

He felt himself surrounded by shadows, the lines between life and death blurring and twisting as he walked pathways inaccessible to the living until a veil in front of him opened and he stepped through it once more onto a packed dirt road under a sun filled sky. Before him were the white stone walls and natural fortifications of the Argent Crusade's stronghold at Hearthglen, once lands belonging to the much respected even among his own brothers Paladin Highlord, Tirion Fordring.

He knew that region well having served as an Alliance commander in Andorhal after Arthas' defeat. The Western Plaguelands had been the subject of the Argent Crusade's and Cenarion Circle's intense efforts at reclamation from the plague which gave those lands their name. It held little of the same gloom which he had previously been surrounded by Tirisfal Glades, and for a moment brought back more memories of his childhood prior to the Third War and Arthas' corruption.

_They will not welcome you. This is pointless. _The feral voice told him.

"Be quiet." He whispered in response. "I will see for myself if the Elf's words are true."

_They will end you, and for what?_ It responded.

Thassarian smiled at the irony of his response, "I ceased to fear Death a long time ago." And he started towards the gates of the fortified town.

As he approached, armed guards saw him and he could feel the immediate tension come off of them. "Death Knight!" The call went out as he came closer to the gates. Immediately, ten more, well armed soldiers wearing the livery of the Argent Crusade appeared at the gates, though strangely to him, none had their weapons drawn yet.

_Strike them down first!_ The voice urged him, stirring up the wracking pains within him which drove him to kill just to find relief from them. _Strike them down before they destroy you!_

"That's not why I am here." He responded quietly, the restraint intensifying the pain he felt.

"Hold there, Death Knight!" One of the new soldiers called out, hand on his sword hilt, as Thassarian came within ten yards of the gates. "What business do you have with the Argent Crusade?"

"No business with you." Thassarian responded. "I seek one named Jeshua Lightborn. I was told he was here."

The soldiers looked at each other uncertainly, unsure of how to respond. They spoke in low voices which he could hear nonetheless.

"What do we do? Our orders were to let those through seeking Jeshua's cure." One soldier asked another.

"But one of them? After what they did at Light's Hope? How can we?" Another replied.

"What would Jeshua say?" The first one replied.

After a minute of uncomfortable silence among them, the soldier called out again, "What is your name, Death Knight?"

"Thassarian." He responded, knowing some there would recognize it.

"Thassarian. Our orders are to let everyone through seeking the teacher. We were not given any instructions regarding your kind. You may pass, but we warn you. Any attempt at a repeat of Light's Hope, and this will be your final resting place under the Holy Light. Am I clear?" The soldier told him.

_Brave words at least. For that I give them credit._ He thought. "Agreed." He responded out loud.

"Keep your weapons sheathed. Any movement towards them, and we will respond accordingly. You will be watched, Death Knight." The soldier told him sternly.

_As if I needed them, but if it makes you feel better._ He thought with some humor, but hadn't really expected any welcome warmer than this. "Also agreed."

Then soldiers then moved aside from the gate to allow him to pass. As he did, another soldier informed him, "The teacher is near the training yard today teaching those who stay to listen. You can find him there."

Thassarian nodded in acknowledgment.

He had not previously visited Hearthglen before either in life or unlife. He had been given no reason to. With its occupation by the Scarlet Crusade and then the Argent Crusade, he had even less desire to visit. There were several houses, stables, and military structures in the town. At the other end from the gate rose Mardenholde Keep, the former ancestral residence of the Fordrings, the original landholders of Hearthglen. Now it was commanded by Lord Maxwell Tyrosus, a Paladin who by all accounts continued steadfastly in the deceased highlord's ideals.

He walked the gray cobblestone streets, fully aware of all the eyes now on him. So be it. He cared little for their malign gazes. He was used to it when visiting Stormwind where his brothers and sisters among the Alliance were still made to feel an unwelcome if necessary evil at times.

As he walked towards what looked to be an open grassy training yard, he noticed several others making their way in the same direction who were not the usual folk he would have expected to see among the Paladins there. Their broken and rotting skin, exposed bone, and mummified appearances left little doubt as to who they were.

"Forsaken? Here among the Argent Crusade?" He asked aloud.

His curiosity aroused, he followed them to where he saw a young human man with strawberry blond hair and beard, sea green eyes, and dressed in woolen robes sitting cross-legged on the ground surrounded by dozens of others. There were elves from both Darnassus and Silvermoon. Orcs wearing the Argent Crusade tabard, and humans dressed as simple farmers and peasants. And there were Forsaken as well, many of them that he could see.

"The Night Elf was a lunatic, wasn't he?" He asked himself again, increasingly unsure of the answer.

He approached where the young man was gesturing as he taught, but stood at a distance, observing and listening as he watched and gauged the reactions of his hearers.

"At one time there was a young soldier of Lordaeron," the teacher began to tell a story. "His mother wanted him to stay home with her and his sister on their farm. But he wanted to fight for his king and his country against the Scourge like his father before him had. His mother only wanted to see him safe, but he wanted to be known as a warrior and a dutiful soldier. He wanted a life of adventure and glory, and he couldn't find those things tending crops on their farm. He said to good-bye to his mother and sister, and left with his prince and the army of Lordaeron to fight. His mother, terrified that she would never see him again, prayed every day to the Holy Light with tears for his safe return, and waited day after day."

Thassarian found himself rooted to where he stood and unable to move for the teacher's words. _What is this? How could he possibly know anything about me?_ He thought in shock. _He hasn't looked up once to even look at me! How does he even know I'm here?_

The teacher continued. "The soldier did well in his prince's service for a while, gaining honor and notability as a noble and formidable warrior. But then one day his prince turned to the darkness, and the soldier was killed only to be raised as Death Knight with little will or freedom of his own. Trapped, he became a servant of death and was forced to kill and slaughter innocents just to relieve himself of the pain he was constantly inflicted with. He wanted to escape, but couldn't, and his own actions horrified him but he could not disobey the Lich King who now controlled him. Sensing this last trace of goodness within the Death Knight, the Lich King ordered him to return home and do the unthinkable. He was ordered to kill his own mother to prove his loyalty."

_Please no. I don't want to hear the rest of it._ Thassarian pleaded in his own mind, remembering his mother's remains. But he still could not move. His body was paralyzed where he stood and unable to respond.

But Jeshua was unrelenting, the expression on his face solemn and saddened as he continued. "His mother, unaware of what her son had become, continued to pray to the Holy Light every day until one day the Light responded to her, and reassured her that one day he would return home to the Holy Light, and they would be reunited in its embrace. The next day, her son did return home to the farm he grew up on, but he was not the man she remembered. She pleaded with him, not for her own life, but for his. At the Lich King's command, he slew her in her own house and left, believing himself beyond the redemption and reach of the Holy Light."

Thassarian could bear it no longer, "And isn't he, teacher?!" He called out, the pain in his voice excruciating. "Does not the Holy Light damn him for all eternity for the murders he has committed. The innocents whose lives he has taken? Does not his own mother's blood cry out for justice against him to the Holy Light?!"

Once more Thassarian fell to his knees, the pain unbearable now.

The teacher then looked up at him, his sea green eyes meeting the Death Knight's own unearthly glowing eyes. He called back to him, "No, she doesn't Thassarian. Her spirit continues to pray for you to the Light, even from the Shadowlands the Light hears her."

All those listening to him turned their heads to see the death knight behind them, on his knees and distraught by the teacher's story. His guantleted hands fell on the cobblestone, grasping and clutching at it for the wracking pains he was suffering. Their teacher then stood up slowly from the ground and walked between them towards the suffering Death Knight.

"How…?" He asked. "How could you know that? I don't…" Thassarian tried to respond as Jeshua came to stand before him, unafraid, compassion and mercy filling his eyes.

"Do you want to come home, Thassarian?" Jeshua asked him. "Do you want to see your mother once more?"

"That's not- that's not possible." Thassarian responded. "Not unless I join her in the Shadowlands."

Jeshua knelt down and shook his head. Then he reached out to place a hand on the Death Knight's black armored shoulder. "With the Holy Light, all things are possible, my friend. Do you want to be free of the Lich King once and for all?"

_KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOW!_ The feral voice went wild within Thassarian, and the bloodlust raged within him until the pain exploded and he knew almost nothing else.

"The pain..." Thassarian moaned. "I can't..."

A warmth seeped unasked for a unbidden from Jeshua's touch. It spread throughout his body and drove back the wracking pains, easing the Death Knight's suffering. He didn't understand how or why the young man would do such a thing for someone like him.

"How?" he asked again. "How could the Light forgive what I've done?" The Death Knight asked.

Jeshua's expression became even more caring and compassionate. "The Holy Light is mercy and compassion. It wants to forgive and rescue everyone from the darkness, not damn them to it." he told him. "Do you want this, Thassarian?"

"I don't deserve it." The Death Knight replied.

"It was never about deserving anything." Jeshua gently told him. "The Light wants to do this for you."

_The Holy Light wants to forgive me? It wants to help me?_ Thassarian had never considered the possibility before. Did he want it? Gods yes he did. But could it really be possible?

"I-" Thassarian didn't know what to say. "Please, help me, Jeshua." He begged him. "I want to come home."

"Then be forgiven, and come home, child." Jeshua resplied, but it was as if the words were from some other power beyond the man Thassarian could see.

Thassarian's world exploded in Light. Pure, radiant, holy Light. The pain ceased completely and he felt warm. Warmer than he had in decades. Peace flooded his form as the Light burst forth from within him, a peace he hadn't known in all of his life. He felt as though he were embraced by a mother, a father, a Being who cared for him more and beyond any mortal parent could. And he felt tears filling his eyes as the salty water streamed down his face. Inside his chest he felt something he hadn't even remembered the feeling of.

_Thump… thump… thump._

His heart had started beating once more.

"Welcome home to the Light, Thassarian." Jeshua told him gently.

Some time after Azeroth's awakening…

Thassarian found himself standing in a grassy field under a golden sky. The colors of the sky, the grasses, the trees in the nearby forest were all vibrant and verdant and more living than anything he had ever seen. Not far from where he stood he could see bright red hills with patches of growing emerald flora. The entire scene was recognizable to him as his family's farm land, but there was something not quite correct. There were no man made structures anywhere that he could see. He wanted to weep for the beauty of it, but found he could shed no tears at all. His auburn colored beard remained unstained from them.

He did not know how he had gotten there. He had been in Northrend with his brothers, other former Death Knights who had been transformed and restored by Jeshua and the Holy Light or by his sacrifice which initiated the New Dawn. They had been attempting to reach everyone there with Jeshua's cup when the earthquakes became unstoppable and the ground had opened up beneath them spewing fire. Then his vision had become filled with Holy Light, and he found himself materialized here in what looked like Tirisfal Glades, but pristine and untouched by any corruption, mortal or otherwise.

Thinking he was alone, he turned around to take in his surroundings. He looked towards where he thought the house should be, wondering what had happened to it or if such things even existed where he was.

Then his heart started racing.

There in the distance where the house should have been stood a man and two women. The one woman he knew as his sister Leryssa. He had seen her enough and worked with her enough over the last month to recognize her anywhere now. But the other woman, and the man… It took him a little while longer until…

Of their own volition, his feet started running towards them.

"Thassarian?!" The other woman's voice cried out. "Thassarian is that you?!"

"Son?!" He could hear the man's voice calling for him.

"Thass! Over here!" His sister's voice called out.

Thassarian ran towards them at full speed, not thinking, not knowing what he was to say or do, but he ran.

"Mother! Father!" Thassarian called out to them. "Leryssa!"

He ran straight into them, and into his family's waiting arms. Finally, after so many years, the Holy Light had brought him home.


	2. Chapter 2

War

During the Legion War; on the Broken Shore before the banishment of Sargeras by the Titans...

"You! Boy!" The older, gray maned Tauren bull, dressed in the leather and feathers traditional to the Druids, called to the teenaged boy sternly. The barefoot human youth wearing brown, travel stained woolen pants, off white linen shirt, and woolen overcoat looked as out of place in his Legionfall infirmary unit as it was possible to be. He looked for a moment as though he might have been one of the Sindorei except for his broad human shoulders and rounded human ears clearly distinguishing him from that elven race.

"How in the name of the Light did you get here? What are you doing here?" The old bull demanded of him.

The youth, Jeshua Davidson, found himself in a kind of shock that early morning just after the first rays of dawn. The sight of dozens, hundreds maybe, of wounded and dying men and women greeted him upon his first arrival, and he had not been prepared for it. It was only one infirmary in the war against the Burning Legion, and not even the one closest to the front lines on the planet Argus which still hung green and broken in the sky above them where the fighting was now the fiercest. This infirmary was fed mostly with the wounded from there on the Broken Shore as the combined Alliance and Horde forces continued to put down the Legion troops even after Kil'Jaeden himself had been destroyed. It was supposed to be the less dangerous duty, but that knowledge was little comfort in the eyes of the soldiers which met his own sea green eyes.

Jeshua had heard rumors as he arrived at his medic's assignment that, instead of falling back or retreating after Kil'Jaeden's death, the very literal demons of the Burning Legion's forces had doubled down and dug in making the Armies of Legionfall pay for every foot, every inch of ground they gained with blood. With the bulk of the combined Azerothian forces taking the fight to the beating heart of the Burning Legion (and even to their strongholds on other worlds he had heard), those who had been left to "mop up" what were supposed to be residual forces in retreat found instead an already vicious enemy fighting twice as hard in all out desperation for their survival.

Humans, elves, Orcs, Worgen; it seemed like all the races of Azeroth had finally become united, at least in the suffering which war against a common enemy brought. Warriors, Paladins, Mages, and even Warlocks it made no difference there in the ever expanding infirmary tents. Blood and gore of several different shades of color could be seen through purple silkweave bandages, and seeping from open gashes or through chinks in armor which hadn't been removed yet. Many were missing limbs, eyes, or other bodily parts: victims of Legion bombardments or vicious serrated blades with hastily applied tourniquets the only thing keeping them on this side of the veil between the living and the shadowlands. Others had been badly burned by fel fire, the stench of cooked meat still wafting around them. The luckiest appeared to be lying on cots, while those who had arrived later were placed as comfortably as they could be on blankets on the hard packed ground. The smell of bile and infection was rampant in the air, mixing with the scent of blood and waste fluids which were not yet able to be tended to. The infirmary was filled with pained moans, and screams of terror from what these soldiers had been made to experience. The strawberry haired young man had never seen so much pain and suffering so manifest in his life.

"Boy! I'm talking to you! How did you get here? This is no place for a human calf!" The priest began again.

How did he get there? For a moment, his mind went blank from the shock of what he was seeing, and then, slowly, images from his unlikely journey from Valiance Keep on a troop transport as a medic recruit returned to his mind. He hadn't been the only one of his youth on that ship, but he had been one of the few intended for the hospital tents and not the battlefields. He had joined the recruits upon compulsion by his Sire, although in truth, the Broken Isles had been the last place he had any desire to go. He knew his sire had protected him in the past, and would continue to do so. But he would be heading into an active war zone having never picked up a weapon in his life, and having neither intention nor inclination to do so then.

"I came to help." Jeshua then answered somewhat timidly, unsure of what to say as he was still reeling from the raw carnage around him. "I wanted to help the injured."

"Where are the other healers we asked for?" The druid wanted to know. Those in command had to know how overwhelmed they were getting, didn't they?

"I- I don't know. I was the only one sent to this unit that I know of." Jeshua answered honestly. "I haven't seen any other medics since we left the transport."

The Druid looked at the boy with surprise and no little skepticism at first, but then seemed to consider it quickly. His tired, brown, bovine eyes glanced back to the sheer number of wounded he and his fellow healers had been given to tend. There had been an influx of wounded that morning, more than they had been staffed and supplied for, and the regular healers and medics had already been going all night. He had a staff of five healers: himself, two Holy Priests from Stormwind, an Orc Shamaness skilled with healing potions, and a Kaldorei Druid. He also had another five nurses, four humans and a Blood Elf female, skilled with the non-magical healing arts applying bandages, suturing wounds, and attempting to ease the pain from the horrific fel fire burns burns with salve which they were quickly running out of. The rest of the physicians from his hospital unit had been reassigned as field medics, replacing healers targeted first by Legion weapons. None of those remaining had slept for almost twenty four hours. He had no idea how many of that staff he would still have by day's end.

"Have you any skill with healing spells or prayers?" The Tauren asked him matter-of-factly, but not harshly. It wasn't his fault he was only a boy, and he had come to help as he could. That at least was something.

"I was taught some healing prayers and how to wrap injuries by my mother." Jeshua replied, having only recently discovered within the last year that the Light would respond to his prayer to heal even though he had neither been anointed as an acolyte, nor consecrated as a priest.

"Taught by your mother were you? Well, at least that's something. Damn. We needed train healers and physicians, not barefoot children, no matter how well intentioned they might be." The bull snorted. "But An'she knows we're short staffed as it is," the Tauren then muttered to himself.

Having made his peace with it, without more words, the old bull thrust some packages of violet colored bandages at him and pointed him at a group of injured soldiers on the ground. "You're here to help, then help. Do what you can, boy. This isn't a schoolhouse. Bandage those who can be helped. Ignore those who will survive without you. Pray quickly for those who are dying, but waste little time on them which could be spent on those who might survive. Make a mistake and those who can be saved will die." He then added, "They may die even if you don't make a mistake. Be ready for that."

Jeshua's face, only just beginning to take on the peach fuzz which would eventually develop into a beard, was solemn and serious with the responsibility he had been given. "I understand." He responded.

"No. You don't." The Tauren replied, his deep, resonant voice melancholic, betraying the many patients he had lost personally. "But you will."

The Tauren moved off to stand over an Orc grunt who had suffered severe burns. Jeshua saw flashes of emerald green energies dancing across the Tauren's hands and onto the burns, mending the skin and easing the Orc Warrior's pain.

"Help me!" The boy heard the plea for help and turn his head towards several patients who had been placed on the floor. All were men, and most were soldiers bearing the insignias of Stormwind, which he knew well. One was missing a leg below the knee, reddish fluid seeping from beneath his leggings. Another's armor was covered in gore, his breathing noticeably shallow, and his face was ashen pale.

"Boy!" He heard one of them calling to him, a different voice than the first, but coming from the same direction.

"Help me, please!" Another man cried out. "The pain! Make the pain stop, please!"

Jeshua froze where he was. He knew he needed to move. He knew they needed whatever help he might be able to render. But he froze where he stood upon the sight of them.

_Holy Light, what was I thinking coming here?_ He asked himself internally, unable to tear his eyes away from the horrific damage the soldiers had suffered. _I'm just a kid. What can I do?_ The weight of what he had undertaken hit him square in the chest as the Druid's words sunk in. _I don't want to decide who lives and who dies!_

"Sire, I can't!" He prayed, barely able to get the words out. He had performed some healing before. He had prayed for a little girl's fever and she had recovered immediately. There was a man whose leg had been twisted in an accident that had been fully restored upon his petition to the Light. Each time his Sire had heard him and responded. But… But this? These men were inches from the Shadowlands. What could he do?

_Call to me, and I will answer._ Not so much words, but feelings and an innate knowledge flooded his mind. _I am always with you_. And with those words came the peace that he was still learning to trust even after the three years he had spent away from his family's home in Stormwind. His Sire made its presence known to him, and the ever present comfort and security that brought even when he didn't fully understand it.

He began to move towards the men, stiffly at first, but he moved. _Go to them my son, bring them my Light._ His Sire urged him onwards. As he moved, that wall of fear which had arisen in him began to break down and the Light's compassion flooded through the breaches making their pain his own.

He stopped and knelt down in front of the soldier whose face had gone ashen. His helmet had been removed and Jeshua could see that he wasn't much older than himself with sky blue eyes and brown hair caked with blood and soil. Gashes crisscrossed the man's face and scalp. Underneath him, Jeshua could see blood pooled from his injuries had soaked the blanket he had been placed on. There were several punctures in the soldier's mail and chain armor in all the wrong places. From the color and sheen of the armor's metal he could tell it had been no ordinary steel which had protected the soldier, but something more exotic and far more durable. Whatever had made those holes had been incredibly powerful and vicious in its intent.

"Help me. Please." The soldier asked, his voice weak. It was clear he would not last the next hour on his own.

"That one's too far gone!" He heard the Tauren's voice call to him from somewhere behind him. "Give him whatever last rites your faith demands and then move on!"

"Please." The soldier begged weakly. "I don't want to die."

_Pray for him._ The Light within him bade Jeshua. _Ask me anything, and I will do it._

"Sire," Jeshua began closing his eyes. Feeling the man's pain as his own, he took the man's right hand in his own, and placed his own left hand gently against the man's head as he prayed, "Holy Light, send your healing rays upon this man, cleanse him of all taint of shadow, mend his wounds, and restore breath and life to his body." It was not one of the prayers his mother had taught him. He felt the words awkward and unwieldy as he said them, but they were what came.

A warm feeling entered his hands as he spoke as an energy built inside him and then poured gently through his hands and into the dying soldier. His were still closed, he could not see what was happening, but he repeated his prayer again. As he did, concern and compassion for the man, even _love_ for the man built within him as the Holy Light continued to churn and build and he began to understand and be able to put words to something which, up until that moment, he had always known but had been unable to verbalize.

"The Holy Light loves you dearly, Jeremiah." He told the soldier much to his own surprise.

Shocked at the words which came from his own lips, he opened his eyes to look at the man. His skin was no longer ashen, but a healthy peach color. He looked stronger than he had been. What wounds had been visible across his face and head were closed with no visible scarring. Jeshua's own hands were glowing with a residual golden white light which faded as his prayers ended.

"I'm sorry… I don't know why I said that." Jeshua apologized even though everything within him was screaming the truth of it.

Even as he did, he saw tears forming in the man's blue eyes as the soldier asked, "How did you know my name?"

Without time to think and ask himself the same question, Jeshua found himself saying, "The Light knows your name."

"I'm- I'm going to live, aren't I?" Jeremiah asked him as the realization hit him.

"Yes. You're going to live." Jeshua told him, and the soldier's eyes then became a flood of tears.

"Thank you. Thank you so much, Brother." The soldier told him, giving him the title of one of the Priests of the Holy Light, emotion wracking his voice. "I thought- I thought I was going to die. My mother, my little sister back home..." His voice trailed off.

"I'm not-" Jeshua began to protest. He knew he wasn't a Priest and he didn't want anyone to think he was trying to pretend like a charletan.

Nearby, a voice calling out cut him off, "Brother, help me!"

_Go to him_. The Light instructed him, and Jeshua obeyed the internal voice of his Sire.

Jeshua then began to move from soldier to soldier, praying for each one who called to him that he heard. His bare hands became stained with the blood and gore of those he prayed for as he held their hands and cradled their heads to comfort them. But soldier after soldier received the Light as Jeshua prayed, and soldier after soldier soon was able to get up and walk out of the infirmary tent under their own power. He continued through the late morning, even forgetting to take a meal when he was supposed to. There were so many hurting, so many crying out to be healed, so many who needed him. He found that he couldn't just walk away.

Some time after noon, he came to a small group of four soldiers, two humans, a Dwarf, and a Worgen who looked to have minor injuries which had already been tended. Their faces were solemn and saddened, eyes watering but their owners refusing to allow tears to fall. They were gathered around a similarly clad Night Elf comrade who lay on the ground. Their uniforms bore the insignias of Stormwind's marines. The stomach of the Night Elf had been slashed open to where red and violet organs could be seen clearly. Other lacerations and punctures could be seen around the man's frame, and blood had pooled underneath him as well. His eyes were closed, and Jeshua could see that his chest wasn't rising and falling.

One of the soldiers looked up and saw Jeshua standing there. "There's nothing you can do now, kid. Maybe if one of you had gotten here just half an hour ago then he might have survived." The soldier told him. "Damned demons got the drop on us. Syrenus took the brunt of it. He saved our lives at the cost of his own."

Jeshua's own eyes watered seeing the pain of the men who had lost their comrade. "I'm sorry." He told them, not knowing what else to say. And then, from somewhere inside of him he repeated, "The Holy Light is resurrection and life."

The soldiers, all of them from nations that worshiped the Light repeated his words solemnly as at a funeral, "The Holy Light is resurrection and life."

_Ask me anything._ The voice of his Sire came to him again.

_Even this?_ Jeshua wondered.

_I am resurrection and life itself._ The Light within him responded. _You have only to ask._

Still unsure of himself, the strawberry haired youth then knelt down and placed his right hand gently over the Night Elf's lavender colored face. Thinking it was another last blessing, the soldiers did not interfere.

"Holy Light, mend his wounds and restore life to this man's body through your healing touch." Jeshua closed his eyes and prayed quietly, petitioning his Sire now for the miraculous, something he had been taught was impossible but nevertheless compelled to ask anyway. Once more he felt the healing energies of his Sire flow through him and into the Kaldorei man. Around him he could hear gasps of surprise and astonishment coming from the men.

And then, as if compelled, he spoke to the body, "Syrenus, wake up."

Beneath his hand he heard the gasp of a man filling his lungs with precious air as Syrenus' eyes opened and he inhaled sharply. Jeshua withdrew his hand quickly and the Night Elf sat up from where he had been laying. No trace of the brutal disemboweling which he had seen remained. Where the fatal injury had been now there only remained a hole in his armor through which healthy lavender colored skin over a taut muscled elvish frame could be seen.

"What- what happened?" The Night Elf asked in surprise. "Where am I?"

"You're in a Legionfall infirmary, friend." Jeshua answered and then added, "You should eat something to regain your strength. You've been out for a long time." In truth, he himself didn't know what else to say, but it sounded like good advice for a man who had just been dead.

Jeshua then backed away from the men, unsure of what else to say or how to explain what had happened. He knew what everyone knew, that the dead could not be resurrected past a six minute window. That was true whether the healer was a Holy Priest, a Druid, or one of the Shamans. Even Paladins whose devotion to the Light was absolute could not resurrect a fallen comrade after six minutes. But this man had been dead for almost thirty if he understood the soldier's words correctly.

_Ask me anything, and I will do it, my son._ The voice of his Sire resonated within him again. There were times that it felt distinct and clear, and other times that he felt it was no different from his own. It could be confusing, and he didn't always understand, and sometimes, like just then, that frightened him.

_Who am I_? Jeshua asked himself, and not for the first time in his life.

"Boy!" The Tauren's deep bovine voice broke through to him.

Jeshua turned around to see the old bull. His bovine eyes seemed less harsh when looking at him now, and they glanced around Jeshua to all of the empty blankets and cots that had held the mortally injured and dying soldiers with whom Jeshua had been tasked. Jeshua couldn't always read the expressions of the Tauren, but he thought the gruff older man had a paternal, even grandfatherly smile for him.

"I don't know what kind of prayers your mother taught you, young human," the Druid told him, "but I thank the Earthmother that she did. But now you must take your own advice and eat something. You missed both the morning and afternoon meals when they were called and you will help no one if you yourself collapse from hunger. Go see the cook for something to eat."

"Yes, sir." Jeshua replied, though he hadn't felt hungry. He didn't know why. By all rights he should have been starving, but he wasn't. He hadn't even realized how long he had been at it.

Nevertheless, he obeyed his superior and went to the mess tent for whatever late lunch might be waiting for him.

A Week Later…

"We need a field medic!" The Legionfall sergeant called out to the infirmary's staff.

Jeshua had just finished wrapping a splint around a Troll Warrior's arm, and had given him a healing draught to drink to speed the mending process. The Warrior had sustained a minor fracture, but it was nothing which would not heal on its own with time. Jeshua had felt no compulsion to ask the Light for it, and his Sire had remained quiet.

That was something that he did not fully understand, but was coming to trust. There were times that the Holy Light moved him to pray and ask for a healing, and then there were times the Light did not. Sometimes, it even seemed like the Light specifically instructed him, _don't_. Those times were rare with those severely injured, but they did happen. With the Troll Warrior and those who had injuries like his, he knew they wouldn't be able to return to the fight right away if at all or else they would hurt themselves further. He didn't understand his Sire's reasoning in these cases, and when he asked why, the response was frequently, _trust me_, with no further explanation.

But no one ever died under Jeshua's watch, or at least they didn't remain that way for long.

He treated human and Orc alike; Tauren, Troll, Dwarf, and Gnome. It didn't matter. He would petition the Holy Light for all of them as that Light compelled him to, and whether they had peach colored skin or bright green, they would walk out of the infirmary rather than be carried out in a body bag. But one group of fighters whom he knew had a presence on the war torn island he never saw in the infirmary.

"Why do we never see Forsaken or Death Knights here?" He asked his Druid supervisor who was standing nearby.

The old bull came and sat down on a sturdy stool next to where Jeshua had been working,and then sighed wearily.

"The undead have their own ways of mending which you don't want to know about, boy." The old Tauren replied. "It may surprise you to learn that not all of Stormwind's dead make it home with all of their parts intact."

"You give their bodies to the Forsaken?" Jeshua asked, truly horrified at the thought.

"Us? No. Of course not. We would not dishonor the dead so, whether they are Alliance or Horde." The Tauren replied. "But the Forsaken do not respond to the healing magics the same as the living. The Light burns them, and the magic of nature can only do so much with dead flesh. I have seen more than one corpse board a ship to be returned home without an arm or a leg whom I knew to have both upon the moment of death here in an infirmary's cot. I say nothing when I do. The truly dead does not need an arm to wield a sword where the walking dead might. It may be an abomination to nature, but they did not ask to be what they are any more than you or I asked to be human or Tauren."

Jeshua had never thought of it that way before, but, to his surprise, the presence of the Light within him resonated with it in agreement. The emotion that came with it was strong and caring towards those who had become undead through no fault of their own.

"Is there no way to restore them?" Jeshua asked.

The Druid looked at the youth curiously before he answered. It was not a question he had expected from one of the faith of the Holy Light. "My people looked for a way for years, our healers and alchemists working with theirs, but were unable to discover one. At best we were able to find a cure for the original plague to halt its advance, but restoring their living flesh proved impossible."

_No, not impossible._ The Light within Jeshua countered, a tinge of frustrated sorrow to the thought, though there was no elaboration.

"Those poor people." Jeshua then answered with genuine feeling.

The Tauren gave what looked to be a half smile and said, "You are an unusual human, boy. You have a tender heart, even for those who are beyond help. Don't ever lose that."

"I won't." Jeshua replied, a seriousness in his voice.

"We need a field medic for a combat platoon near the Tomb of Sargeras!" The sergeant called out again, directing his rquest towards the Tauren. He was an Orc wearing the sigils and tabard of the Armies of Legionfall over heavily dented and scarred plate armor that might have been painted the blood red colors of the Horde once upon a time. A heavy double bladed axe hung from straps at his back, nicks and notches in the blade from frequent use. "They've lost their healer and need a replacement!"

The Tauren Druid stood up from where he sat, drawing himself up to his full, ten foot height towering over every one else in the medical tent. There was a kind of majesty about the gray maned healer that Jeshua had not taken notice of before, as if the Tauren wore his wisdom and experience as a crown upon his head and across his horns.

"We have no one left to send, Gortask. We are down to myself, Urias," he pointed his bovine chin towards a slender, fire haired Blood Elf Priest tending to a dwarf shaman, "the boy, and two nurses. None of us would last long on the battlefield. You would be back for another before sunset. We are supposed to receive more medics in two days."

"Hmph." Gortask responded without argument. "Undoubtedly, Tarne, but orders are orders, and these demons aren't going to wait for two days to be cleaned out. Fighters or not, these soldiers won't last without a healer."

The old bull seemed to age years in a few seconds as he looked to his remaining staff. Then he began to say to Jeshua, "Tell Urias..."

But Jeshua cut him off, "I'll go. You're needed here more than I am."

Many conflicting emotions crossed Tarne's face at the boy's statement. "No, Jeshua. I can't allow that. You aren't even old enough for your people to grow a beard. I could never..."

Jeshua then put his hand on the bull's arm and said, "It's okay. I'll go. I can pray for soldiers out there just as easily as in here."

The Tauren was about to say something again, but then went silent and nodded slowly in understanding at the boy.

"This is a Horde platoon, whelp." Gortask told him, sizing the human up. At the very least, the human whelp had courage and that was more than some. "You have a problem with healing my kind and his?" The Orc motioned towards the Druid.

"Not at all." Jeshua told him honestly. He had healed anyone and everyone who had passed through the infirmary's tent flaps. "The Light cares for all equally."

Gortask snorted at the statement but accepted it all the same. "Grab a weapon and meet me next to the portal masters in ten minutes."

"Weapon?" Jeshua asked, surprised. "I've never used one before."

"No better time to learn than now." The Orc replied unsympathetically. "You'll need one where we're going." To the Druid he remarked, "You may be right about seeing you again sooner rather than later."

And then the Orc sergeant marched off to finish other business before they left.

On the Broken Shore near the Tomb of Sargeras…

Jeshua had never seen the Twisting Nether personally, but he imagined that the scene around him couldn't have been too far different, or that the Nether could be much worse. The landscape was blackened and rocky. What vegetation there was had been withered and twisted into foul, unnatural shapes tainted with the fel. And everything around him felt just as tainted from the volcanic ground underneath him to the very air he was breathing.

The tower known as the Tomb of Sargeras, once a temple to the Night Elf goddess Elune, loomed above his platoon like a dark colossus. Swirling foul green energies surrounded it, and the cries and shrieks of their enemies and the souls they took to feed those energies could be heard echoing across the rocks and jagged canyons Jeshua's squad marched through.

With Jeshua, there were five of them. Gortask led the squad personally. He had been surprised and derisive when Jeshua had arrived at the portal master with no weapon to speak of, not even a staff, and wearing only the clothes he had arrived with on the Broken Shore overlain by a tabard with the sigil of the Armies of Legionfall to mark him as a "friendly" to their side. There was a muscular Orc woman warrior with a mostly shaved head except for a long salt and pepper warrior's braid who was Gortask's lieutenant, a Troll druid who specialized in drawing the ire of the demons away from the rest of them, and a mail armored Tauren armed with a heavy rifle that looked more complicated and more lethal than any musket he had seen before. The Tauren was accompanied by what Jeshua recognized as a male lion from the Barrens in Kalimdor whom he casually referred to as "Kimba."

"Where's Pillix?" Gortask had asked in Common, the agreed on language for their combined armies when working together, when he had arrived with the human boy, looking this way and that for someone.

"You took too long getting another healer." The Orc woman, Shaggara, responded in Common as she visually sized up the human Gortask had brought. "What is this? We need a combat medic, not a barefoot human waif!"

"He volunteered." Gortask replied. "And he was all Tarne had left to spare. The rest of our healers have all been shipped to Argus."

The Troll muttered something in a gutteral language that Jeshua knew was Orcish. It didn't sound pleasant even for Orcish.

"Who is Pillix?" Jeshua asked, somewhat innocently.

"He was our explosives master." Gortask told him gruffly. "A goblin. Poor at games of chance, but good with blowing things up." To Shaggara he asked, "where did you put the body?"

"We didn't get a chance to recover it. It was grabbed by one of those hellish flying monstrosities." The warrior woman replied pointing skyward to a flock of bat like things shrieking in flight over a clifftop near them. "I watched as one of those fiend's talons ripped his head off. He's gone."

Gortask considered this for a moment, then responded, "Then we proceed as planned regardless." He then turned to Jeshua and told him, his deep Orc voice firm and matter of fact, "Your job here is to keep us alive while we do our job. You keep us alive, we keep you alive. We die, you die. Understand, whelp? Can you do that?"

"Yes." Jeshua responded without qualification. This was beyond any prayers or litanies his mother had ever taught him, but somewhere inside he knew he could pray and the Light would keep these soldiers safe.

His other platoon mates looked at him skeptically, but they had no other options.

"Good." Gortask said. "We move out now. We've got demons to slay." He then added, "For Pillix."

"Aye, mon." The Troll added. "For Pillix. Da demons dey gonna pay. Dat goblin owed me gold."

That brought a dark chuckle from the rest of them that Jeshua didn't, couldn't fully understand. But under it was a real sentiment of anger for their comrade's death, and a real feeling of loss. This was a fellowship, a brotherhood bonded by blood and honor that was not easily broken without consequences by anyone.

The whole squad of five then left the safety of the nook in the rocks where they had been taking refuge for the last several hours and began their march up the blasted dark colored narrow rock ledges which led to where the nest of Legion soldiers and their "pets" were clustered. The air around them was warm with a foul moisture to it, and carried a sour stench of rot on it.

Out on the periphery of his vision, Jeshua thought he imagined wraiths or spirits nearby. But when he turned his head to see several times, there was nothing there. The ground under his feet as he walked the ledge in line with the others was hard, and sharp pebbles bit into the tough callouses he had developed over the last several years. He could sense the tension from the others. It was palpable. They were all soldiers, and it wasn't hard to see they had been fighting in this war for several years at least. They kept their eyes open and their ears pricked, but did not appear bothered by the sights, sounds, and smells which were assaulting his own human senses.

They came to the crest of the rocky ledge to see an open plateau. The Tomb of Sargeras rose in the background, closer than Jeshua ever wanted to come to it. He did not feel afraid of it, but it carried an evil feel that he wanted no part of. The whole landscape carried that evil feel, and internally he felt sorrow and mourning for what it had been before the Legion had been brought here by the Warlock, Gul'dan. Not far from where they had arisen unseen, Jeshua could see more than a dozen demons, huge hulking warriors with ram's horns and bat like wings, and smaller rodent like creatures twisted and diminished from whatever their originally created form had been. Others had neither horns nor wings, but wore helmets with a single spike jutting up from the forehead like one of the rhinos he had seen in his time in Northrend. All wore heavy plate armor over their shoulders, legs, and chests, though some chose strangely to leave their well muscled torsos exposed. Perhaps it was meant to intimidate their opponents with their visible musculature, Jeshua didn't know. All carried heavy, fierce looking axes and swords which no one needed to tell him could cleave him in two with a flick of a demonic wrist. High overhead, the winged terrors which had killed Pillix circled threateningly.

An image came to his mind unbidden of a time long, long before when these creatures were not so tainted, but lived peaceful lives on a world far, far away until the fel came. It tainted and twisted them into the dark monsters they had become.

_Is there no hope for these?_ Jeshua found himself asking internally.

His question was met only with the feeling of a deep sorrow, the sadness of a parent whose faithless child refused redemption. _If only…_ the feeling was verbalized within him, and he could have wept right there.

Gortask motioned for Jeshua to come up next to him. Jeshua understood and complied. As quietly as the Orc could, he pointed to an unoccupied point between a group of large, gray stone boulders at a short distance which were ignored by the demons. "Go. Stay there in between the rocks where you can see us, but where they can't see you. Call to your Holy Light for us from there. Don't be seen, or we all die. They see that you're a healer, and you'll have a dozen demons on you in a heartbeat. Understand?"

Jeshua did, and the youth obeyed the squad commander, quietly but quickly slipping over to the cover of the rocks where he could see as much of the intended field of battle as possible. Once he was in place, he did as he was bade and began to call to his Sire to protect those who went into battle against the Legion soldiers.

The Troll went first, shifting his whole body's form and mass until there was little left of the Troll and only a huge, powerful bluish gray dire bear with massive Troll like tusks remained. The bear roared a challenge to the demons and then charged, smashing into a group of them, knocking several down and using it's weight and powerful blows to keep them stunned and disoriented as much as possible. Next to the bear, Kimba the lion ran and sprang, claws out, at the nearest demon on the Tauren's command slashing and biting until foul greenish demon blood flowed freely from multiple wounds. While the demons were preoccupied with the bear and the lion, the Tauren hunter began carefully targeting those Legion troops being distracted and attacked. The two Orcs charged into the melee, battle axes raised high.

Jeshua prayed for the soldiers. He knew no litanies for combat, so he beseeched his Sire honestly and with purpose. As he did, in the middle of the fight, the golden glow of the Light's energies could be seen enveloping each of the warriors engaged against the demons as the sacred presence responded to the sincere petitions of its singularly born offspring. Demons swung heavy blades and threw blasts of fel and dark magics at the Horde soldiers, but nothing appeared to get past the Light's protection of them as they continued to hack and slash at the demons, bringing them down one at a time. Overhead, the winged terrors dropped from the sky shrieking, talons extended, as they came in for the attack trying to snatch and tear apart the warriors, but being rebuffed by the shield of Light energies. The youth tried to keep his eyes open and watch the battle so that he knew where his prayers would be most needed, but it was not a sight he wanted to see.

The violence of the combat was horrible as axes bit into flesh, and sharp animal claws drew blood again and again, ripping apart their targets with relish. Shells hit their marks expertly without fail from the Tauren's rifle, but, unlike a human or even an Orc, it took many to penetrate the demons' thick hides. Several of the demons were riddled with such bullet holes oozing glowing green demon's blood before they finally succumbed. The young man had never seen anything like it before, and never wanted to again. He could feel the pain of the injuries himself from where he was, internalizing it whether it was a demon or one of his squad. Still, he continued praying through it all, knowing it had to be done, but hating it all the same.

"They've got a Priest with them!" He heard a deep, demonic voice call out. He didn't know how he understood the words, as the Legion soldier was speaking in their own demonic language, but he did. "Find it and kill it!"

Fear seized Jeshua's mind, and his heart began to pound. The words of his petitions began to falter as his eyes began to look for any sign that they had found him. Still, he knew the warriors were counting on him, and he continued to pray, frightened as he was, covering them with the Light's power and protection as best he knew how.

Then he saw one of them, a massive, scarlet and violet skinned creature with huge bat like wings and bull like hooves direct its attention at him. It carried a heavy blade which was easily longer than Jeshua was tall. "You!" The demon called out, pointing that massive blade directly at Jeshua. "I will feast on your heart!"

It then marched purposefully directly towards where he had hidden himself between the boulders.

"Sire!" Jeshua then cried out, forgetting for just a moment out of terror the petitions he had committed to. "Save me, please!"

_Everything I am, all my power and authority are yours, my son._ The Holy Light within him responded. _Trust me._

The sounds of the battle beyond on the plateau began to die down, but Jeshua could see only the Dreadlord stalking towards him growing closer and closer. In the distance, he heard the faint voice of the Orc sergeant calling out, "Look to the boy! Take down that Dreadlord!"

But they were farther from him now than the well armored and armed demon was. Jeshua heard the rifle fire again and again, but the Dreadlord did not stop its march towards him.

"I see you little worm!" The Dreadlord announced as it drew up to the rocks. The creature raised its blade for a killing blow.

"STOP!" Jeshua then shouted, commanding the demon to hold. Within himself he felt the Holy Light's power magnify a hundred fold, no a thousand fold, and still it rose greater within him until he could not tell where he ended and his Sire began.

The Dreadlord froze where it stood, arm raised, but unable to bring down the weapon on the boy. It couldn't move anything at all but its eyes. "What is this?!" It demanded from the boy, moving its jaw and lips with extreme difficulty.

"Drop your weapon. Now." Jeshua ordered it again.

Unable to resist, the Dreadlord's fingers opened, and the heavy blade fell from its grasp burying itself deep into the rock as it did.

"How are you doing…?" The Dreadlord began to ask, fear creeping into its own voice. Then it dropped that question for, "What. Are. You?"

And then the Dreadlord cried out as if in extreme anguish and dropped to its knees before the barefoot youth. "Arghhh!" It shouted, doubling over before Jeshua. Terror written all over its face. "Please…." It began to beg. "Mercy…. My lord…. Please…. Don't destroy us…. I beg you…."

"Leave this place, you and your brothers." Jeshua ordered it. "Leave and never return."

"Yes..." The demon responded, the tone of its voice one of utter defeat and servility before an impossibly superior being. "Yes… We will leave, my lord… We will leave… Thank you..."

The Dreadlord then called out to its brethren in its own demonic language, fear still evident in its cry. It slashed at the air and a fel green portal opened from nothing large enough to accommodate its frame. It went without hesitation through the portal, and those demons that had survived the soldiers' onslaught followed suit until only the Horde troops and Jeshua remained on the plateau.

It was only after all the demons had gone that Jeshua saw the two Orcs, the Troll Druid, and the Tauren marksman staring at him, mouths agape, both terror and astonishment, and something approaching awestruck reverence written over their own features. He wasn't certain, but he thought the Tauren cheeks were wet with tears. Their expressions unnerved and disturbed him. He didn't want anyone looking at him like that.

"Are you all okay?!" He called out to them, but they did not answer him. He tried again, "Are you injured?!"

It was the Troll who spoke first, "Never, in all my life, did I ever see nothing like dat I just seen, mon. What be you, boy?"

"I don't… I mean..." Jeshua couldn't fully explain it himself. He knew that, in that moment, he and his Sire had somehow merged, but even that explanation didn't fully feel right. "They're gone now." He finally said. "They won't be coming back. Not here anyways."

"Earthmother watch over us." The Tauren finally spoke, still unable to come to grips with what he had just seen.

"What did we just see, boy?" Gortask then finally asked, trying to process it in his own mind and being unable to come up with any satisfactory answers. "I saw you light up like the sun itself. Your very eyes blazed with light. No Holy Priest I have ever seen has ever done that. And the demons… They ran in terror of you!"

"I..." Jeshua didn't know how to answer him. "Please, sir." He finally said. "I'd like to return to the infirmary. I don't think I'm cut out to be a combat healer."

Gortask was taken aback by the request, and the evasion of his question. He might have pressed it under other circumstances, but having seen what he had seen the boy to be capable of, he believed it wisdom to let it drop. "Agreed." He told him. "There's a portal mage not far from our position. I could use a mug of strong grog right now anyways." To the others he said, "We'll wait for the new medics to arrive. Until then, we rest."

Jeshua then asked them all, "Please don't tell anyone what you saw. I don't know how to explain it myself yet."

Gortask nodded his agreement as did the others. None of them would talk about it again. After all, who would believe that a powerful Dreadlord ran in terror of a barefoot human whelp?

As they made their way off the plateau down to the sheltered position where the portal mages were stationed on that side of the island, the question both the demon and the Troll Druid asked kept running through Jeshua's mind again and again, and it was one he could not yet answer, "What are you?"

Of course he knew the circumstances of his birth, and he knew, and had known who and what his Sire was. But he hadn't yet been able to answer for himself what that meant for who and what he was, and what role he was to play except to continue following the leading of his Sire towards some goal, some purpose which had not yet been revealed to him.

"Who am I?" Jeshua asked himself quietly on the long march back to safety.


	3. Chapter 3

Paladin

Frostmourne lay shattered on the snow covered ground, the souls it had consumed freed from his grasp. Ner'zhul's helm, both his source of power and his constant tormentor, twisting his mind again and again, lay at a distance from him, out of his reach. For the first time in a long, long time he was, once again, just "Arthas."

"Father, is it over?" He spoke to the ghostly form of the king he slew years before. "At long last. No king rules forever my son." Came his father's compassionate response. "I see… only darkness… before me..." And then he had breathed his last breath upon Azeroth.

And "woke up" in this… this place.

He didn't know how long he had been there. Time was meaningless as past and present blurred. The landscape was at best gray and lifeless, and it was constantly shifting underneath him as he was made to relive his sins one at a time for eternity. The deep, insatiable darkness was everywhere, beyond just an absence of visible light. It was a hungering shadow which permeated everything, tormenting him endlessly, reminding him of his failures and mistakes. It was cold, without the slightest warmth, and the cold bereaved him of even the warmth of good memories from his youth.

"The Light has abandoned you, Arthas!" The malevolent shadow tormented him relentlessly. The face of his father at the moment he slew him was before his mind always, "You no longer need to bear the weight of your crown…," followed by the face of Uther, his mentor and friend, "This entire city must be purged." His own words rang in his mind without end. "How can you even consider that? There's got to be some other way." Uther's response always followed, haunting him. This was then followed by the faces of every life he took: Gavinrad, Ballador, Sage. Sometimes he would see the face of the woman he had loved, Jaina Proudmoore, fade in and out horror written all over it for his atrocities, and he didn't know if she was alive or dead. The form of a brown haired woman, Vivian was her name, backed against a wall in terror as a Death Knight ended the life of his own mother on Arthas' orders. An Orc warrior, a Stormwind nobleman, people from every race on Azeroth whose names he didn't know. An endless parade of the spirits of the dead and damned for which he was responsible flew around him and into his mind reminding him of his many, many sins. He tried running from them, but there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide there in that darkest of places.

"I just… I just wanted to save my people..." He would try to defend his actions at Stratholme, in Northrend. That was how it started. He had wanted to save his people from the plague, from the Scourge, until… until he became the Scourge itself.

The landscape and scene around him kept shifting again and again. One moment he was in his father's throne room, the next he was in a grassy field in Quel'Thalas, still the next he was in Northrend standing just outside the Wrathgate against a united army of Azeroth come to end him. It was dizzying and disorienting and he lost track of where he was until all he could see and feel were the terrors he had inflicted on others, and the damnation he had brought to them heaped back upon himself a thousand fold.

For a brief moment, he thought he saw the elf ranger-general, Sylvanas Windrunner. Her face would torment him too as he would remember her exact expression of terror and horror when he had ended her life and ripped her soul from her body to keep as a banshee as a kind of revenge for how troublesome she had been during his conquest of Quel'Thalas. She had somehow managed to free herself from his grasp, returned to her body, and attempted to end him, turning the undead he had raised against him. In that brief moment of eye contact in that place, he thought he had seen a glimmer of pity in the cold, dead eyes of her spirit, and somehow that made his torment all the worse.

"I only wanted to save my people." Was that really his voice defending himself still? He didn't even know anymore. It sounded young, like a child's voice. There were times a child's face and form would appear to him, a sad and pitying look on his features. The boy with blond hair looked so familiar to him, like someone he had known in another lifetime, and long ago.

"Father, is it over?" He would ask the spirit of the dead king again… and again.

But the faces of the dead, the faces of those whose souls he had fed to Frostmourne, kept coming. It was never over.

And above all of it was a the insatiable darkness, always hungering for more, whose presence felt absolute in this place, omnipresent, and inescapable. Sometimes he would hear the whisper of a name, "Mueh'zala," and it struck a cold fear and despair through him that brought his torment even deeper. No other lord of death caused such dread, or wielded death as intimately. It was a name which was feared above all others in this place, and it was synonymous with Death itself.

Or perhaps Death himself.

Arthas Menethil could not escape the weight of the god of death's presence. It was oppressive, and reveled in the fallen Paladin's torment for Death's own enjoyment, like the former Lich King was a broken puppet whose owner was not done amusing himself with it.

Arthas Menethil was damned in every sense of the word, and there was no escape from his darkness.

"I only wanted to save my people..." Still the voice of the boy he had been continued to protest. "Father, is it over?" He would ask again still.

"The Light has abandoned you, Paladin." The shadowy voice of Mueh'zala hissed at him, a trace of laughter in the words.

"Father, is it over?" He asked yet again.

"Someone is coming, Arthas. The king of Lordaeron is coming." The voice of Uther replied, penetrating the despairing madness.

_That's not right_. Arthas became even more confused. Uther's voice never said that.

"Father, is it over?" Arthas asked again, expecting his father to reply to him yet again.

But it was not his father's face that appeared to him this time in the throne room. This time, out of how many? "Arthas, you must listen this time." He knew that voice. It was the voice of his mentor, Uther the Lightbringer. He saw Uther's face appear before him again as it was before he slew the great man with the runed blade, Frostmourne.

"Uther?" Arthas asked. "We must purge the city." He replied.

"That is long over and done with, my prince. Now, you must listen. The king is coming soon." Uther replied, his wise, bearded face appearing, not horrified, not angry, but compassionate, forgiving even. There was a different hue to his face that Arthas didn't understand, and even frightened him. Uther appeared to glow a golden color, filled with Holy Light, even seeming to be made from it. It hurt, and scared him, but also felt… warm? He wasn't sure. None of this was right.

"My father is coming? But I slew him." Arthas replied, confused.

"Arthas, you must listen, my prince. The king is coming, and when he does, the Light will fill this place from one end of the Shadowlands to the other. He is already calling to his champions to stand with him. He comes to free those trapped here. When he comes, he will give you a choice. The Light is giving you a choice, one last chance to turn from Death and return to the Holy Light's embrace. The choice is yours."

"The Light?" Arthas questioned.

He looked towards Uther, golden and seeming to shine with a Light he had not seen for a long, long time. He appeared to be standing, hammer in hand, wearing his plate armor. Arthas found them both appearing to be standing in the middle of a throne room he recognized. The throne room seemed dark and cold. It had been dark and cold since… since the day he drew Frostmourne and…

"The Light is reaching out to you, Arthas..." Uther told him. "Take its hand when it is offered."

"The Light has abandoned me, Uther." Arthas replied, parroting the lord of death's abuse. "It abandoned me at Stratholme when I slew my people."

"The Light abandons no one, my prince. You turned away from the Light out of fear and vengeance, the Light did not turn away from you. The king is coming. He will be here soon, and all of the realms of Death will tremble at his coming."

Around him, Arthas could feel fear rising in the darkness at the Paladin spirit's words. Fear, anger, uncertainty; the darkness itself around Arthas felt terrified and that terror radiated out across the vastness of the Shadowlands. He could hear screams and cries in the distance as Death itself grasped its prisoners tighter in its clutches as though fearful of losing them.

"Take his hand, my prince. Don't turn it away. The king is coming." Uther's voice urged him, and then faded. The great man was gone, and Arthas was left alone in the darkness that clutched him, especially him, even tighter in its grasp.

But… "The king is coming. Take his hand." Arthas repeated Uther's words, and his mind felt less fuzzy, like someone had tied an anchor to his consciousness to keep it from drifting once more. Uther's words stirred something in him. He felt the boy saying those words to him again and again, holding him against the malicious, violent storm. The boy he had been before Frostmourne, before the helm of Ner'zhul, before the Lich King was still there. The grip of the darkness around him did not seem so tight, and he felt… what was it? Had it been so long that he did not recognize it?

"The Light…" He repeated. "The Light did not abandon me. Take its hand. One last chance." What did it mean? What was that feeling? And then he remembered, and the grip of the darkness was loosened even more.

Hope.

Rage. The Darkness around him raged and screamed at him, "No! Not here! Not in my realm! You belong to me, Lich King! You are mine for eternity and for eternity you will suffer for what you have done! You will suffer for what you are!" The blackness engulfed him and the endless parade of faces began once more and it became magnified as he found himself standing on a field of human remains, Frostmourne whole once more and slick with the blood of his victims. Despair began to take a hold of him again.

"I..." He began to say his defense once more, but then that hope which had been planted refused to die. "The king is coming." He then said instead. "The Light abandons no one." It gave him a kind of strength which felt familiar, like something from a long lost memory.

The darkness exploded in wrath around him, assaulting his tormented spirit again and again with the repeated images of his victims and their bloody, senseless deaths, none more frequent then that of his father as he thrust Frostmourne into his aged form seated on his throne.

But the stubborn hope which Uther had planted refused to die, and Death continued to take out its frustration on the fallen Lich King.

He didn't know how long it had been. There was no way of knowing. It could have been minutes since he had seen Uther's Light filled form, it could have been centuries. But suddenly, as he was standing in that throne room yet again, another was seated on Lordaeron's throne.

But it was not his father.

His ghostly eyes beheld the form of another figure made from Light itself, though it was not Uther. This man did not look so different from Arthas himself. They might have been brothers, or even twins except the man sitting on the throne wore a beard, and his eyes burned and blazed with white gold Light. He wore robes like plain priest's vestments, though his hands and feet were bare. A halo of Light surrounded his head like a diadem. The man shone like the sun in the deep darkness that surrounded Arthas and forced the shadows which had tormented him back and into retreat.

In this vision, Arthas was once more holding Frostmourne, and was clad in the black, saronite armor of a Death Knight. It was the same day, the same scene, but the man sitting on the throne was not Terenas Menethil, king of Lordaeron. A different man wore the crown. A man he had never met, and yet somehow recognized as familiar. He looked straight at Arthas with those Light filled eyes.

As Arthas looked back, meeting the man's gaze he saw not the confusion, fear, and horror of his father. No. He saw something else.

Compassion. Mercy. Forgiveness. Healing. Even love was written in the man's expression as though it were an open book. More than these even, Arthas saw _Life_ written in those Light filled eyes, unending power to create, renew, and resurrect.

"There are two paths before you, Arthas Menethil. The Path of Death, and the Path of Holy Light." The man spoke to him, and Arthas had the sense of standing in judgment. "You know the Path of Death. The Path of fear, vengeance, and hatred. You have been down that road. Where did it lead you?"

"Here." Arthas replied uncertainly, but honestly. "It led me here, to the cold and the shadow, and the torment."

His judge nodded in agreement. "And why did you go down that path?"

Arthas went blank for just a moment, though it felt as an eternity, but he answered with the same answer he gave before, "I wanted to save my people. I would have given anything, everything to save them."

"And did you save them walking that path?" The judge asked.

"No. I lost them. I lost everything." Arthas answered. "I lost..." Despair began to creep into his voice once more.

The judge's face as he gazed on him was not one of condemnation, but empathy. "I know." He said. He then told him, "I offer you now the Path of Holy Light, Arthas Menethil. Let go of Frostmourne and come home, my champion." The man on the throne told him. Then, he extended his right hand to Arthas, inviting him to take it.

Arthas looked at the man's hand. When he extended it, he could see what looked like a gaping hole in the man's wrist as though a massive spike had been driven through it. He had seen few wounds like that on living men.

"Take my hand, child. Come home." The man repeated.

Arthas looked at the man blankly as though he did not understand his words. Then he looked down at the runed sword in his right hand. It seemed foreign somehow, like it didn't belong there.

"Let go of Frostmourne. Let it no longer have any power over you." The man told him gently.

"This..." Arthas began to say. "This isn't how it happened." He pointed at the throne. "My father was sitting there and… and… I… Oh, gods. Oh, Holy Light… I..."

The man stood up from the throne and approached the Death Knight who would become the Lich King, his hand still outstretched towards him. "I know. Take my hand, Arthas Menethil, and be forgiven."

"Forgiven?" Arthas questioned, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, somehow, in that place he felt tears stinging his eyes. "For what I've done? I… Oh gods, I killed my father… I killed Uther… I killed all those innocent people… Oh Holy Light what have I done?" And in that moment, in that admission of guilt, Frostmourne loosened from his right gauntlet as Arthas took the outstretched hand, and the sword fell to the stone floor beneath him as great wracking sobs filled the chamber of the throne room and echoed throughout it.

And then the blade of the Lich King shattered, unmendable, and unforgeable ever again.

The man then pulled Arthas gently into his embrace. As he did, the Light from the man reached out and engulfed the former prince, bleeding into him and purging the remaining traces of the darkness from his spirit until only the Light remained, and Arthas himself was transformed into almost a mirror image of the king before him. His mind cleared, and the doubt and fear which had occupied it were gone. He was whole and in his right mind once more.

"How?" Arthas asked as the king released him. "How could the Holy Light forgive me for what I've done? All that I've done? All those lives I took?"

The king held up his hands again for Arthas to see his wrists. The vicious hole which he had seen had been driven into both.

"Like this, my champion." The king replied. "I wept when you wandered from my path. I only ever wanted you to take my hand and come home."

Amazed, overwhelmed, and filled with the Holy Light once more like he had never been before, Arthas went to one knee in fealty before him, asking, "Who are you, my lord?"

"I am Jeshua." The king replied. "And I am the Holy Light."

"All that I am, such as I am, I swear to you, my lord." Arthas then swore with all the sincerity he could offer, the clarity of his mind and heart certain and for the first time in a long, long time, at peace.

"I accept your service, Arthas Menethil, Paladin of the Holy Light." Jeshua replied to him solemnly. "Rise, my champion. I invite you to join my crusade."

"What crusade is that, my lord?" Arthas asked as he stood before him once more, his armor shining like the sun at high noon on a clear summer day.

"I go to bring Mueh'zala to account." Jeshua responded. "I have come to free all those held prisoner by him here. Death's reckoning is at hand."

"You have my..." Arthas had intended to say "sword," but there was none in his hand, nor could he find one nearby. The shards of Frostmourne had vanished from sight.

Then he looked towards Jeshua to see his newly sworn king holding a heavy, two handed warhammer in his hands. Like himself, it blazed with the Light, waiting to be wielded in the cause of justice, mercy, and righteousness. "You will need this. I now restore to you your hammer. It will be my wrath upon the powers of Death which have tormented and corrupted all those spirits held captive."

"Light's Vengeance..." Arthas said with no little awe in his voice as he did the first time it had been given him upon his first consecration to the sacred knighthood. He took the hammer in his armored hand from the Light filled king in front of him.

"Welcome back, brother." Arthas knew that voice. He turned from the face of his king to see another kingly man he recognized, also filled with Light as though made from it, standing at Jeshua's right hand. The great sword, the Ashbringer, hung loosely from straps on the knight's back.

"Tirion." Arthas remembered his name.

Tirion Fordring nodded as he clasped arms with him, joy in his eyes as he did.

Another came up to him to clasp arms with him and then drew him into a fierce embrace. "I knew you'd come home, boy. I knew it." Uther told him.

And then Arthas found himself surrounded by dozens, and then hundreds of Paladins, filled and seemingly formed from the Holy Light itself and the chamber of the throne room around him faded away as more and more of the spirits of the holy warriors joined them, welcoming him back into the Light with open arms, forgiving and embracing him. Every Paladin who had ever died in the service of the Light, and many more that he knew had, like himself, fallen into the darkness. The Light had come for them all to reclaim its own.

"How are you here?" Arthas asked them. "How are you all here, in this place?"

"They are here because I am here." Jeshua replied for them. "They are in the Holy Light as you are now in the Holy Light. Where I am, you all are, and where you are, I am."

Arthas nodded, a kind of understanding coming over him. They all did not just seem to be made of Light, they were all a part of the Light now, distinguishable, but inseparable. They were all one with the Holy Light and in the Holy Light.

And then the scene shifted once more, but this time all those surrounding him did not vanish but remained together with him as did the king, Jeshua. They were standing on a field of dead grass and shrubbery overlooking a black citadel that bore more than a passing resemblance to Icecrown's own ebony walls and towers. The sky above him swirled with gray clouds that seemed to flow upwards into an all consuming rift. Between the army of Paladin spirits and the citadel lay hordes of creatures, twisting and churning from shape to shape, that appeared to be made of death itself.

"YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!" a deep and demonic voice cried out at the assembled Paladins. "LEAVE THIS PLACE!" It was meant to be terrifying to all who heard it, but instead a panic could be heard in it that belonged to its owner.

"Give the order, Uther." Jeshua told the Paladin's spirit calmly. Arthas noticed that his face became resolute and hardened, focused on the task at hand. The king was committing his forces to war.

"Paladins of the Light!" Uther cried out to his brother spirits. "Form up ranks!"

Instantly mounts, barded warhorses, elekks, rams, and kodos appeared formed also from golden white Light and the assembled Paladins mounted up, unstrapping their weapons and readying them for battle. As Arthas mounted his own steed, a glorious stallion which gleamed with the Light's power and presence, he noticed Jeshua's own raiments changed from the simple robes he had first met him in to golden white plate armor in which he was encased, and then he too mounted a warhorse and took point to lead the charge. But Jeshua bore no weapon like his knights, which the Paladin thought strange.

Arthas then realized his king needed no weapon with which to make war.

Hundreds strong… No, Arthas realized as he looked out at the lines and ranks of Light made armored knights, _thousands_ of Paladins stood ready just waiting for their lord's command.

"Your forces stand ready, my king." Uther then formally informed Jeshua.

Jeshua nodded and then turned his own horse to face the spirits of the men and women who had sworn themselves to the call of the Holy Light. Men and women, humans, Draenei, dwarves, Tauren, and elves ready and waiting for his word.

"Today, this day, at long last we take the fight to Death itself!" Jeshua called out to them, and was met with a cheer which shook the fields and the black towers beyond. "We free those held prisoner in torment, forced to relive nightmares and horrors endlessly! Today we bring the Light to the darkness! Today we bring Mueh'zala to justice! In the name of the Light!" Jeshua cried out to his knights.

"IN THE NAME OF THE LIGHT!" The Paladins cried back.

Jeshua then turned his own steed back towards the scene in front of him. With a great shout he cried out, "PALADINS!" and thousands of Light armored holy warriors tensed and readied weapons and shields in their gauntleted hands.

He then gave the order, "CHARGE!"

As one, the warriors of Light surged forward on their war steeds, led by Jeshua as a spearhead, like a tsunami against the darkness waiting for them. That wave raced down the slopes hard and fast and slammed into the creatures of made of death's own substance, obliterating them as the Light made contact. The Light forged hooves of horses trampled down those creatures unlucky enough to be caught in the way. The very ground beneath the hooves and feet of their mounts burned with consecrated Light as they charged which spread out and raced across the landscape. The king himself burned like the sun at noonday, waves and pulses of Holy Light flying from his hands like spears and into the malevolent hungering shadows, destroying fiends and banishing them into non-existence. The darkness attempted to strike him again and again, but a great golden shield had arisen around him and expanded like a protective arc around all of those waging war against it, forbidding the lashing of dark tendrils from even reaching him as they thrashed around and around trying to discover an opening and finding none.

Dawn had come to the realm of Death, and it would not be denied.

Jeshua continued his charge towards the gates of the black citadel. Swirling clouds of black darkness surrounded it, the wails of despair and hopelessness of the damned crying out to him for mercy. It spurred him on all the harder as he sought to answer them.

Arthas focused on his own task even as he both saw and instinctively knew what was happening around him through his brothers and sisters in the Light. Light's Vengeance fell again and again against shadow fiends and Death's defenders, dissolving and obliterating the darkness they were made from. The Holy Light blazed around him righteously as he continued the charge near his king.

He heard Jeshua cry out as they neared the gates of Mueh'zala's stronghold, and then those gates exploded outwards opening a gap wide enough to drive their forces through and into the citadel. The aura of Light around Jeshua grew brighter and larger as he reached the entryway and those fiends attempting to guard it vanished like shadows in the noonday sun. Jeshua dismounted from his own steed, and entered the citadel as his knights continued the battle outside.

"ARGHHHHH!"

Athas heard an unearthly, demonic scream like he had never heard before. The next thing he saw when he looked towards the citadel were great, white hot cracks breaching its ebony walls, running the length and breadth of its towers and spiked, evil looking crenelations. The swirling mass of black shadows around the citadel disappeared as the Light increased and glowed brighter and brighter through the ever increasing cracks.

There was a great tremor, a quake Arthas felt in the atmosphere around him as well as in the ground beneath. Then he watched as the black citadel, its towers and walls, collapsed into black shadows and darkness which burned away under the bright Light which burst forth from it and that Light continued to expand outwards until it filled Arthas' vision and there was nothing else left. It was warm, peaceful, and he felt joy like he had never felt before as its healing rays spread across what had been the Shadowlands.

There was nothing left that Arthas could feel of the presence of the god of death.

"Is it over?" He found himself asking once more, as if on instinct.

"At long last, my son. Yes, it is over." Arthas heard the stately voice of his father once more. "Mueh'zala is no more."

Surprised, he turned his gaze in the direction of the voice to see the form of an elderly, majestic bearded man in kingly robes. It was the form of his father as he had seen him so many times before. But this was different. Like himself, his father's form appeared to be made of golden white Holy Light.

"I see only Light before me, father." Arthas replied as he looked out on the field of battle once more to see not thousands, but millions of Light forged forms surrounding him. They were the spirits of all those freed by the Light. "I see only Light before me, and it is glorious."


	4. Chapter 4

Resistance – Part 1

On the Alternate Draenor, two years after the end of the Legion War on Azeroth...

The elder Orc was tired as he rubbed his manacled wrists. The strong metal chains those manacles were attached to were secured to the walls by both magic and some Draenei magecraft he didn't understand. Neither magic nor engineering technology were his strong suits. Blood and thunder were his calling.He had been born a warrior, and had fought all of his life. He had fought for blood and honor to rise to the chieftainship of his own clan, the Warsong. He had fought to rise to become Warchief of all the Orc clans. He had fought the Draenei to conquer and unite all of this world under the banner of an Iron Horde. He had fought outsiders, foreign creatures and people from another world, when they came to stop them. He had fought alongside those very same outsiders against hell spawned demons from the very Twisting Nether itself. And for the last several years, he had fought against those he had thought friends for his and his people's very freedom. War was in his blood and bones, and just as much a part of him.

But now, sitting in this Draenei cell somewhere in the depths of… —he wasn't even certain where they had taken him and the Blademaster—Grommash Hellscream was just… tired. Stripped of what armor he had worn after he had been brought to this cell, all he wore was his skull head belt and worn leather breeches. Except for the shackles, his hands, feet, and upper body had remained bare. His brown, heavily muscled frame was criss-crossed with scars from countless battles. The bird's skull pendant had been left to him by his captors, but it was the only thing adorning his breastbone. His long hair, still tied back in its wolf's tail was gray, showing how long he had survived and giving an account of how many battles he had walked away from. Being able to live until one's hair turned gray was something not every Orc warrior could boast of. He had led thousands of warriors into battle. But for the last year, or so he had been told, all the sixty something year old Orc had been able to do was sit there and think.

The cell was kept warm in the cold season, and cool in the hot. It was made of some kind of bronzed Draenei metal in the walls and patterned bars, and Hellscream could see other similar prison cells across from him. He had been afforded a small slit of an opening in the wall which served as a window to allow sunlight and air to flow through, but it was nowhere near large enough to escape through. Through it could be seen a brown and red dying landscape beyond the streets and towers of Draenei origin giving him the only clue to his location. He thought perhaps that they might have taken him to Shattrath, but he couldn't be certain. In the last decade or so, much of the world the Draenei named after themselves had fallen to this condition with only a few places left which boasted grasses, trees, and wildlife. There was a slab formed from the metal and stone of the floor and walls with a built in mattress with some kind of soft stuffing for him to sleep on, and a latrine built into the walls in which for him to relieve himself. It was certainly more luxury than he would have afforded a prisoner, but it was still most definitely a prison. A cage.

The great Grommash Hellscream, warchief of the Iron Horde had been caged like an animal.

He and the Blademaster, Lantressor, had charged out alone to meet the Lightbound army and their "High Exarch," the Draenei female Yrel in order to give the rest of his uncorrupted Orcs time to escape to that other world. They had been uncorrupted, pure from both first the fel demon blood which turned those who consumed it to insatiable killing monsters, and also pure from the Light which he did not trust and which he knew had been forced on some of his people. These "mag'har" in his language were the best of them and the last representatives of his people's freedom. He would give anything to give them the chance to keep that freedom, including his life. He had intended to give it, had expected to give it alongside the half-Orc, half-Draenei Blademaster, Lantressor. Blood and honor.

Instead, within seconds of reaching the High Exarch's heavily armored Elekk mount he had been stunned and knocked unconscious by some unseen Light magic. The next thing he knew he was in this cell waiting to be forced to accept the Light like the other captured Mag'har. So be it. The rest of his people were free, and that was what mattered.

He had expected to be dragged before the naaru almost immediately to have his free will taken from him. Instead, he had received regular visits from "Exarch Hellscream," his own traitorous offspring who had abandoned his people, his ancestors, and his father to join the group of religious fanatics.

"So, have you come to force the Light on me like you did the others?" Grommash had asked the traitor when he showed his face the first time. "Yrel sent you to do it, did she? What? To prove your loyalty to her, or to the naaru?"

"I came on my own, father." The Orc clad in Draenei forged armor responded calmly. "I had hoped to talk sense into you, to make you see that the Light is not this world's damnation but its salvation."

"That Draenei female has blinded you, boy. This world has grown weaker and more desiccated since the Lightbound began their misguided rampage!" The aged warchief shot back at him. He spat on the floor in disgust. "Do what you came to do, _Exarch_," he used the Draenei title as though it were a profanity, "and get it over with."

"I already have." The traitor replied. Grommash was even more disgusted by the look of… what was that? Pity? Sadness? What then? It was nothing worthy of an Orc warrior! "I will return later and we will talk again." He had said before he turned to leave.

"You are no longer Warsong, an you are no longer my son. You are without clan and without family." Grommash said to his back. "My son is dead."

The Orc Exarch then turned back once more to him, weakness showing all over his face as he responded, "You may have given up on me, father, but the Light won't give up on you, and neither will I."

He had tried, and failed, to escape several times after that. Iron chains had been clapped on him after the first attempt and the second, but even iron could be snapped by a strong Orc willing to fight, and broken chains could be turned to weapons by a skilled warrior. Especially in the first few months of their captivity there had been few guards set over them who had not found themselves unconscious and bleeding while attempting to feed their charges. His and the Blademaster's old age and experience would prove better than axes or swords again and again before the guards would wise up. Those iron chains had been replaced by this seemingly unbreakable Draenei metal. Initially, Lantressor's cage had been next to his. It had not been difficult for them to out-think their Lightbound jailors, to work out escape plans without spoken words passed between them which the Draenei or the traitor Orcs would hear. But they never got far. Lantressor was eventually moved to a different cell. Hellscream had not heard from him since, and wondered if the naaru had their way with the Blademaster. And the truth had dawned on him as the days dragged on as well. Even if he did escape, to whom would he now return? All of his people were gone to that other world called _Azeroth_. His home, his world, had fallen and he now had neither.

Exarch Hellscream kept his word and continued his visits, but the warchief wanted nothing more to do with him. The traitor got to talk to Grommash's back and listen to the response of silence most days. He deserved no response for his Lightbound cult's lies, and would not listen to either the Orc elder's wisdom or reason when he did choose to respond.

He rubbed his wrists again. The manacles chafed against them constantly. Some days he could ignore it, and some days the discomfort got to him just a little more than others.

"This isn't what I wanted, father." Exarch Hellscream had told him more than once.

_It certainly wasn't what I or any true Mag'har wanted either, now was it?_ Grommash had thought in response, but never dignified the traitor's comment with words.

"Why do you resist the Light when it is healing, life, and peace?" was another constant question.

"Peace. Life. Is that what was offered to Durotan and the Frostwolves?" Grommash spat once in reply. "We tried that way once, after the demon filth Gul'dan was driven from the world. We called the Draenei 'friends' after a time and set about rebuilding. _We_ did not break that 'peace.'"

The Exarch had no response to that. Grommash had just the slightest shard of hope in that moment he might have found a crack in the armor. But if he had, somehow that crack disappeared quickly. The Orc Exarch's fanaticism never waivered.

After a year of this, for the first time in a lifetime of waging war both without and within, Grommash Hellscream found himself tired of fighting. Perhaps it was his age. Perhaps it was being stuck in a Draenei cell for what felt like forever. Perhaps it was the knowledge that he was the last of the resistance on this world and there was no one else left but the Lightbound. But regardless of the cause, a toll had been taken on him, and he felt the exhaustion deep within his bones.

Strength and honor. Blood and thunder. These had not been mere words to him. They had been his code, his scripture, his very reason for being. But after a year in that cell, he felt as if these too had been slipping away from him. And there were moments, brief moments, when he questioned why he was even resisting at all.

But the Light had taken everything from him, including the freedom he held most dear, and he would not let it take his very soul as well. Not as long as he had his will left to him. He had sworn it.

On Azeroth, several weeks after Jeshua's ascension…

Andrew Haleis found himself staring for the first time at a sight he had previously only heard about in stories that seemed too fantastical to believe. The landscape around him was much changed though from what it had been previously for the last forty years. It was all wetlands and swamp, green and growing, restored after the New Dawn to what had been known as the "Black Morass" long before he had been born.

He scratched his short, straw colored hair as he looked at his surroundings. His feet were as bare as they had been for months now since following the teacher along with his brother, and sinking a bit in the mud as it ran between his toes, but it didn't bother him. It wasn't the first time. He and his brother had grown up fishing in and around Menethil Harbor since they were young boys and made their meager living that way from both selling their catch and feeding themselves with it. The Blackmouth they caught in the waters around the drowned town was prized by alchemists for the oil they could get from it and could fetch a decent amount of gold depending on their catch. He'd never wanted much more than the simple life they had been given, and had been happy with it and with talking about philosophy, theology, and pretty much anything that struck his fancy that he might have read about or heard about from the travelers who passed through the port town with his brother. And then his brother had introduced him to Jeshua Lightborn in _The_ _Deepwater Tavern Inn_ and his whole world got bigger than he had ever thought possible.

The truth was, it didn't really look that different from the province he had grown up in and called home around Menethil Harbor. Frogs and snakes had made their home there in abundance. Every once in a while he would catch a glimpse of a six legged crocolisk trying to decide if it wanted to use him as a meal. Trees grew around the area out of the muddy waters in abundance. Yep, it was pretty much like home.

The crater which had been created by the first Dark Portal remained even as new life had grown around and within it. But the massive stone gateway, flanked by great hooded stone guardians and overseen by a twisting stone serpent across its lintel had remained undisturbed. The energies which connected it to the other world, Draenor he had heard it called, still shifted and danced across the aperture between the sword wielding statues.

How had he found himself there? After the Paladin lord Jeshua had instructed him to go find, Grayson Shadowbreaker, left from Tarrin Mill, he had felt the distinct impression from the Light that he was supposed to stay put and not return to Lordaeron City where the others were just yet. So, he did. The day after Grayson left, Andrew held a service on the first day in Tarrin Mill's old chapel for all those there to receive Jeshua's cup just like they had in Lordaeron City. After that, he stayed there in the town for a few days, catching up with the innkeeper and a few others he had gotten to know in their journey from there to Hearthglen months ago after the whole town had been changed by Jeshua from undead to very much alive.

He had struck up a conversation with a formerly undead mage by the name of Mackenzie who had originally been from Andorhal before the Scourge. After sharing a few rounds of ale sitting at the inn's bar, the mage began spinning this unbelievable tale about the world called Draenor and finding himself traveling through time thirty six years in the past and into a war being waged there by something called the Iron Horde. Mackenzie said he had fought against ogres alongside brown skinned Orcs in a snow covered wasteland, and took on demons singlehandedly. He wouldn't have thought much of it. It was, at best, another one of the many exaggerated sea stories and fish tales which old soldiers and sailors liked to spin. Entertaining to be sure, but otherwise only that. He had heard plenty of them back home from passers on through.

Except while he was talking, Andrew couldn't get past the feeling that there was more to it. And he felt that impression, that soundless voice which guided him, the voice of his friend and teacher, saying to him inside his own mind, _That's where you must go._

"So..." Andrew found himself asking before he could think it through, "How'd you get to this other world, anyhow?"

"Well," the mage began, clearly tipsy from his ale, "let me tell you it wasn't easy." And the mage then launched into his grand heroic tale about fighting through waves and waves of heavily armed Orcs alongside the likes of Khadgar, Thrall, and other notables whose names even a simple backwater fisherman like Andrew had heard of. Finally, though, the mage told him, "and then we jumped through the Dark Portal to the other side to take the fight to them! Then we had to shut it down from the other side to keep that whole army from coming through! Thousands of them I tell you! With all kinds of mechanical war machines goblins could only dream of!"

"I'll bet." Had been Andrew's answer as he nursed his own second mug of ale.

"It's true!" Mackenzie had insisted as he took another swig of his own mug. "Just a year ago in fact, a whole bunch of those brown skinned Orcs… Uh, what did they call themselves? Uh… Mag'har Orcs. Yeah. Mag'hars. A whole bunch of those Mag'hars came back through and landed over in Durotar just outside of Orgrimmar. I saw them myself when I was there. Must have been at least a couple of hundred of them. Said they wanted to join our Horde. Can you believe it?"

"I thought you said the Dark Portal had been shut down on the other side?" Andrew challenged his story, seriously considering that it was the ale talking now and wondering why it felt like he needed to pay attention to it.

"It had! I swear it! I was there when it was! But as I heard it, a couple of higher ups in Orgrimmar got a hold of some kind of artifact that this Nightborn mage—you know, from Suramar—could use to create a portal back there. The Queen wanted more allies for troops at the time after the Legion War. Remember, you know, this was all back before Jeshua came and changed everything. We didn't know if we were going to war with the Alliance again or not. Somehow he got it working and then they brought back all of those Mag'har with them. I heard it wasn't going too well for them there. Something about some insane Draenei forcing the Light on people."

Andrew had considered this before asking the mage, "Do you think it's still possible to go back to where they came from?"

The mage seemed to consider that question seriously in spite of his ale. The question itself seemed to sober him a bit. "I don't know. I'm pretty good with teleportation and portal magic, but that's crossing dimensions and maybe even time itself. I'll tell you what though, if anyone's able to do it, it would be that same Nightborn mage, Oculeth. He got it working to begin with and as I've heard people talk about him, there's no one alive more skilled at telemancy than he is. Why do you ask? You planning a trip, Emissary?"

The question had been asked in jest, but the more Andrew considered it, the more he felt pushed to talk to Oculeth. The next day, after they were both much more sober and had consumed at least two cups of Blackrock coffee each, Mackenzie had agreed to open a portal for him to Orgrimmar to speak with Oculeth on the condition that no one knew where Andrew had gotten his information from. Apparently, the mage had revealed far more of what he knew than he had been supposed to. After agreeing, Andrew took the portal to Orgrimmar and was directed to where Chief Telemancer Oculeth was working on maintaining a transportation hub of portals which had been built into the Orc city's massive walls.* As one of Jeshua's Emissaries, once it was made known, the respect he was shown by those in Orgrimmar was almost uncomfortable to him. From what he gathered, Sylvanas had left standing orders that Jeshua's Emissaries, should they appear, be given whatever assistance they required without question. Once he arrived where the Nightborn mage and scientist was, the Chief Telemancer, having reviewed his copious notes from the previous request, had been able to fashion a teleportation stone which would lock onto that place and time in the other Draenor.

"The original artifact which was used has been completely drained of its power, but I believe this teleportation stone should be sufficient for one trip. But, and I must stress this, Emissary of Jeshua, I cannot guarantee that you will be able to return. The stone which will see you through the Dark Portal to Draenor will only work once and then its power will be exhausted. I can give you a simple Hearthstone which is enchanted with our location in time and space, but whether or not the magic will be strong enough to bring you back… I cannot reliably predict that. I have heard of reports of them working across vast distances such as what we are discussing, but they are anecdotal at best and can't be trusted without far more rigorous testing. You must remember, it took the fel energy of hundreds of souls to open the Dark Portal to begin with as I understand it." Oculeth had warned him. "Are you certain this is where you want to go?"

_This is where you must go, Andrew._ He heard his teacher's voice within him once more.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Thanks for the warning though." The fisherman had replied before the Nightborn mage had given him the two stones, one ebony and smooth except for an emerald green rune, and one white and common with a familiar spiral blue rune etched on its face.

The Chief Telemancer had opened a portal for him to where the Dark Portal still stood in the southern end of the Black Morass, what had been only weeks before still been called "The Blasted Lands." And that was where he now stood, in the middle of a swamp with only the hint of the remains of a road out from that now overgrown crater in between the trees and murky waters. He had only been talking to Gereth in Tarrin Mill over drinks not two days before.

"Well, I guess this is it." He said out loud to no one in particular. He hesitated just for a moment though, remembering the Nightborn's warning. There had been a time when taking a trip to Stormwind or Ironforge seemed like traveling to the end of the world. Then he met Jeshua and traveled as far as Lordaeron City itself. Then he found himself stepping through a portal to the other side of the world. Unimaginable to him just a few months ago. But this… This was something else entirely.

_What if I can't get back?_ He asked himself. It was a legitimate fear. The portal mage said as much. _What if I never see Azeroth again, much less Amerian, Jim, Syloren, and the others?_ They had all become just as much family to him as his own younger brother, Peter. Would he see Peter again?

But then the thought came into his mind and began to drown out his doubts, _The teacher told me to go. He didn't say why, he just said I needed to go there. Do I really need to know what's going to happen on the other side? After everything I've seen? After the places I've already been?_

Andrew had made up his mind and his path was clear. Either he kept following the teacher or he packed it up and went home. He chose to keep following where Jeshua led him.

He pulled out the black stone from a pocket in the simple blue woolen trousers he wore and held it in his right hand just like the mage told him to. He then said one word, "Draenor."

The world around him instantly melted away and he himself turned inside out and felt like he was forcibly sucked into the dimensional gateway in front of him. He felt nauseated and disoriented and everything exploded into a multitude of colors and stars until it all went black.

Then, almost as soon as it began, he found himself standing on an overgrown stone platform overlooking a vast, thick jungle with towering trees forming a canopy which seemed to stretch into the horizon. He felt so nauseous from the experience he doubled over the instant he felt solid ground under his feet again and nearly vomited what he had eaten just a few hours before while Oculeth had been working on his problem. He didn't, but for a few seconds he wasn't sure the roasted boar and spice bread he had eaten with such gusto at _The Broken Tusk_ wouldn't come back to forcibly haunt him.

When he recovered a bit more, he stood himself up and looked around at his surroundings. Behind him, a larger and more fearsome version of the Dark Portal stood, though no swirling pool of energies could be seen between the carved hooded sentries. Parts of it looked to be crumbling, and cracks could be seen running throughout the stonework. A great carved dragon's head could be seen overlooking the lintel, but once of the dragon's fangs had broken off. Vines and jungle foliage grew around the archway threatening to eventually engulf it. Beyond it he could see the sun of that world a little ways above the horizon, though he didn't know yet if it was rising in the east or setting in the west from where he stood. It might have been morning or late afternoon.

Turning back to the vista he had first seen, he could see small stone pyramids had been erected to both his right and left, though he had no idea what their function might have been. They too had been under assault by the jungle's flora for a long time, as though this place had been abandoned for decades at the very least. Something didn't look right to him though. The plant life, as abundant as it was, looked brown and sickly like someone had poisoned it. It wasn't like the swampland he had just come from where everything was green and teeming with life. It all just felt… wrong.

"Well, teacher," Andrew said out loud, "I'm here. Now what? There's a whole lot of jungle out there and I have no idea where I'm supposed to go from here."

_Walk the path._ The same soundless voice came to him.

"What path?" Andrew questioned, not seeing much except decaying overgrown stonework. He cast his eyes around him again carefully, onto the platform and then the jungle beyond and began to be able to make out more stonework among the vines and growth. That stonework continued on, stretching deep into the jungle before him.

"Okay, I guess that path." Andrew remarked at the sight before starting down the worn stone steps of the platform. "Though it's not much of a road anymore if it was at one time."

One foot in front of the other, trying to be careful not to trip on the ground cover of dying vines and plants, the barefoot fisherman set out on what looked like the only path forward for him, not really knowing where it might take him except deeper into the jungle ahead and whatever dangers might lie therein.

In Shattrath City on Draenor…

Exarch Hellscream cast his gaze over the Zanger Sea in the late morning. His head was freshly shaven of its hair except for his thick black beard which was braided with silver and gold rings. The sunlight gleamed off of his gold colored, Draenei forged armored shoulder plates which denoted his hard earned rank among the Army of the Light, adding to the innate Light which gleamed from jagged strips which ran across his chest and arms in magically imprinted tattoos on his tanned brown Orcish skin. His greaves and legplates were likewise forged from the same Draenei metal with a massive golden belt buckle in the center of his abdomen. Like many warriors of his people, he chose to wear no breastplate or protection across his chest of any kind. Exarch of the Light he might be, but he was still an Orc and honored his people's traditions in what way he could.

There was something calming about the open water to him, and the sound the waves made. It was almost as calming to him as the Holy Light itself when he would reach out to it. The scent of the salt on the air was always invigorating and there were times that he wished life might have been different and he might have sailed on some ship, plying the waters for either adventure or trade. But it was of little use to the Orc to wonder about things which might have been. And it tended to only increase his sense of sorrow especially when considering what might have been if his father could only see the Light as he did.

He knew the old warchief to be an honorable warrior and a capable, respected leader who wanted the best for his clan and his people beyond his clan. Make no mistake, he thought Grommash Hellscream still a great man, even if a stubborn old fool at times.

"How much as your stubborn foolishness cost you, father? How much has it cost all of us?" He wondered aloud that morning as he often did. He did not shed tears. His people rarely did if ever. Problems were solved by combat and not by sobbing over them. But the further his father's resistance dragged on, the more sorrow it brought to the Orc Exarch, his eyes could have watered at what his father's resistance to the Light had caused him, and even possibly their world.

Draenor was dying. It was being poisoned somehow, slowly and steadily. The Orc knew this deep within himself as well as by just simply watching the natural world around him. His people had been deeply connected to the elements once upon a time, and there were times like now when he felt just a trace of that connection to his world still. He remembered the world when he had been a child, how it seemed so vibrant and full of life. The verdant grasses of Nagrand, the azure blues of Shadowmoon, the bright but calming forests of Talador all still lived within his memory. But now the rot had set in, the "desiccation" as his father had called it which was turning even lush Gorgrond into a desert. It had not been so when the warchief had first pressed a blade into the Exarch's young, brown skinned hand for his trials of manhood and achieving his status as a warrior of the Warsong.

One thing the Exarch was certain of was that it was not the Holy Light which had caused it. The Light to him was life, peace, joy, and creation itself. He felt this deep within his bones more than he sometimes felt Draenor itself call out to him at times in despair.

"I thought I might find you here." The Orc heard a familiar Draenei woman's voice behind him. He did not turn and salute, or make some show of formal respect upon hearing it as others might. Their relationship was more familiar than him thinking he needed to, maybe even approaching fraternal though he could not be certain. He had not grown up with a sibling. He had heard that, once upon a time, there had been another from a different time and a different Draenor, but he had been dead for decades crushed by the might of earth by an Orc shaman who had come to put an end to his madness and bloodlust. Upon hearing of the story of this other "son of Hellscream" the Exarch had sought to ensure that he would never follow the destructive, honorless path of his counterpart.

"The sounds of the sea, the feel of the salt air on my face, they are always soothing, High Exarch." The Orc replied.

"Yes, they are." She agreed as she came to stand next to him. "You visited him again this morning?"

"Yes." He replied. "His... _opinions_ have not changed. I had hoped that at some point he would see reason, but he refuses."

"He continues to refuse the Light?" High Exarch Yrel asked rhetorically.

"He continues to refuse the Light, the naaru, you... and me." Her Orc counterpart answered. "He wants nothing to do with any of us. His words concerning you were, shall we say, 'choice.'"

"We had both hoped that he might listen to you." She responded. "But if he will not listen to his own son, whose voice will he listen to?"

"He still holds the death of Durotan against the Army of the Light. It did not help that several of my people were made to accept the Light against their will by the Lightmother. It still troubles me greatly that both were deemed a necessity." Exarch Hellscream told her.

"And me as well." Yrel replied with sincerity. "Durotan was a great chieftain of his people. I counted him as a friend too. His death was a tragedy. But he gave us no more choice than your father gave us if we are to save this world from what is happening."

Exarch Hellscream nodded his understanding. He knew what had happened. It was a tragic misunderstanding which had just spun out of control. His people would be no one's slaves, not now and not ever, and some, especially the older generation, saw the acceptance of the Light as nothing short of slavery to it when they had just barely avoided slavery to the fel and the Burning Legion by the skin of their tusks. His own experience with the Light had been nothing akin to slavery, but few of them would listen. They would be mastered by no one and nothing, even it meant their own doom and the doom of the world they lived on.

After a few moments of silence between them, both looking out to the horizon, he asked, "Has there been any word from A'dal?"

She shook her head, a sad frustration creeping into her voice. "No. Tempest Keep remains silent. The gates remain closed."

The naaru were beings made of shards of Holy Light. The naaru O'ros had initially come to the Draenei and assisted in their escape from the Burning Legion on Argus to this world. More had arrived decades ago to assist in the eradication of the Burning Legion forces which had established a foothold there. Led by A'dal, they arrived in the interdimensional, multistructure fortress ship known as Tempest Keep which had anchored itself above the Draenei capital of Shattrath City and, continuing to impart their Light filled guidance and wisdom, had not since left. As far as anyone knew, they were still there. But the gates of Tempest Keep had closed months ago, and no one among either the Draenei or the Orcs had been inside since. More disturbingly, the naaru had not made contact with any of the Exarchs in that time. Tempest Keep had not moved, but it was as if the naaru had just vanished and left the Army of the Light to their own devices.

"I see." The Orc replied evenly, though the silence from the Light filled beings, the Lightmother in particular, was growing more disturbing by the day. Exarch Hellscream knew it was so to no one more than Yrel.

"The death of the world which the Orcs began continues unabated. We know our only hope is in the Light. All those who were resisting have either fallen or fled. We need their wisdom now more than ever. Why do they stay silent?" Yrel asked. "Why does the Light not heal this world now?"

The Orc took a deep breath and sighed. He did not challenge that it began with the Orcs, stung though her words did. He knew the history of the Iron Horde, and Gul'dan the Warlock. It had been Orcs that had begun the war of conquest thirty-six years before and soaked the ground with oil and gunpowder as much as with the blood of the Draenei. It had been an Orc, and not a Draenei, that had summoned the fel and the Burning Legion to Draenor. It had been Orcs that had built Hellfire Citadel and it had been Orcs that had polluted Tanaan Jungle where the corruption had begun. It had been Orcs that had built the Dark Portal and powered it with fel energies. Those were unquestionable and undeniable, if uncomfortable facts. He would not cower from the truth. He had sought and fought hard to change his people's minds as well as guide them on a new and different path in the Light and away from their blood stained past.

"I do not know." Was his answer. They were questions he had been asking himself as well. As far as he knew, the Army of the Light had done its part. Now, the fate of Draenor rested solely in the hands of the Light itself. But the Light seemed in no hurry to heal the world from their mistakes. "I have asked myself the same question many times. But I feel I must trust the will of the Holy Light that it knows what is best."

Yrel nodded immediately and quickly in agreement. "You're right of course, my friend." She responded, adding, "Thank you for your continued faith. You were among the first to answer the Light's call from among your people, and you have never waivered."

"The Holy Light has never given me reason to." The Orc replied. "It is my armor and my war axe, my hope and my comfort, and it has never left me even in those times I have doubted."

"We must trust the will of the Light even when we do not understand it." Yrel agreed as though lost in a memory. "Even when it remains silent."

"There is great power in silence, High Exarch. Much can be communicated without words. One only has to stop speaking and listen." Exarch Hellscream told her.

"How can you be so wise for… for..." She began to ask.

"For an Orc?" He answered, a wry smile on his lips.

"For one so young." She corrected him, reminding him of the vast age differences between them. It was numbered in centuries.

"Hmph." He retorted, remembering his father who sat in a cell in the city behind them. "Not wise enough."

In the Tanaan Jungle...

Andrew walked for hours just observing what was around him. The road beneath him continued straight in one direction. The sunlight had not given out yet, but grew brighter through the canopy of trees as he walked. This told him that he had arrived some time in the morning a couple of hours after sunrise. In the shade of those trees, it was not hot, but it was not as cool as he might have thought it should have been. The air felt stuffy to breath and it had a strange odor to it which grew stronger the farther he walked from the Dark Portal. Along the road, he encountered the wreckage and debris of war machines which had been destroyed and left to the mercies of the jungle. Barricades had been erected at one point he passed, though they had not been manned for a long, long time.

"I guess old Gereth wasn't spinning as big of a fish tale as I thought he was." He said out loud, breaking the silence with the sound of his own voice. "Looks like there was some pretty heavy fighting going on a long time ago."

Around noon, when the sun rose high over head, the canopy of trees began to thin out and the landscape in front of him drastically changed. Here, the jungle had not been able to reclaim what had been its own. The jungle had not ventured past the break in the trees at all. The stone path he had been walking on suddenly became a well defined and worn road, wide enough to ride horses side by side and for wagons to be drawn over. It led directly west and into what looked like something out of a gnome's or goblin's twisted nightmare.

A great fortress or citadel rose in front of him surrounded by a moat of glowing green ooze. Stone walls reinforced with iron and punctuated by massive cannons surrounded the fortress. The towers and walls of the fortress resembled the walls and towers he had seen upon his visit to Orgrimmar, though the front gates looked like they had been blown apart at one point and never rebuilt. The rocky island on which the citadel had been built was gray and lifeless to his eyes as was the oily and sterile landscape beyond the moat in a ring around it extending outwards in every direction with the citadel at the center of it all. The jungle which seemed so thick not that long ago just couldn't grow anywhere near the place, and those trees and plants which grew around the edge of the dead zone seemed to be the worse off of any that he had seen. The stench which had grown steadily on his journey through the jungle was at its worst in that place. It smelled of filth, death, and sulfer.

What he did not see was people of any kind. He had met no one along the road through the jungle, and looking out to what had obviously been a well manned fortress at one time there was no one to be seen anywhere near it. It was just abandoned and left to rot without any explanation which was obvious to him.

He made his way over to the side of the old paved road he had been walking on and touched the gray and lifeless soil with his fingers. It felt oily, but he also felt a slight burning sensation the longer it remained on his fingertips. He quickly tried to get it off by wiping it against his trousers until his fingers were clean.

"What is this place?" he asked aloud as he rose once more to a standing position. "And why'd the teacher want me to come here?" He'd never seen anything as hellish as this before.

As he was contemplating this, he heard what sounded like a screaming or a roaring somewhere in the distance. It grew louder and louder as though it was coming towards him but he couldn't tell from which direction.

"You on the ground!" A deep accented voice then boomed at him from somewhere in the sky. "Hold where you are! This is a restricted area!"

Surprised, Andrew instinctively turned in the direction of the voice and looked upwards, shielding his eyes from the noon sun with his hand. What he saw drawing closer to him… Well, he wasn't quite sure what it was. It looked like a huge golden armored metal "thing" with two arms, two legs with jets of fire streaming out of its "feet". Runes made of Light formed an arch across where its head or neck should be, and it looked like it had golden mechanical wings made of Light. The whole machine shone with the Light. Andrew didn't know machines could do that, but he could feel the Light's presence radiating off of it even from the distance he was at. After spending so much time with Jeshua, he knew the Holy Light well, intimately even, like a close, dear friend. As it came closer to him, he could make out what looked like a male Draenei piloting the craft staring back at him from where the head of the thing ought to be. The closer it got, the louder the noise from its engines became and Andrew realized it was some kind of war machine, though one like he'd never seen before in his life.

"Hello, friend!" Andrew called back in a friendly manner, waving at it as it touched down. "That's quite the machine you've got there!"

The Draenei at the controls seemed confused for a moment, then gave a half smile and a look of recognition. "You're human! From Azeroth?" the voice boomed again.

"Last time I checked!" Andrew replied, shouting to try and be heard over the machine's still roaring engines. "I might have taken a wrong turn somewhere! Truth is, I'm not entirely sure where I am!"

"You're on Draenor in the Tanaan peninsula about a mile east of the old Hellfire Citadel! How did you get here? This place is too dangerous for anyone to remain here for long unprotected! The levels of fel corruption are extremely toxic!" The Draenei responded from inside his mechanized suit of golden armor.

"Yeah, I got that impression!" Andrew replied. "Ain't nothing growing near it is there?"

"You can't stay here!" The Draenei pilot told him, real concern in his voice for Andrew's safety. "I'm going to need to get you out of here! I'm taking you back to Shattrath City. You can talk to the Exarchs there and explain your situation!"

"Okay!" Andrew replied. "How do you..." He didn't get a chance to finish his question as the Draenei's war machine lifted itself from the ground again, approached the human, and gently picked him up and wrapped its massive mechanical right arm around his waist securely. It then launched itself into the sky and rocketed westwards. The fisherman from Menethil Harbor hung on to the mechnical arm not a little terrified as though his life depended on it.

The noise of the machine's rockets was deafening as the Draenei piloted the craft low across the sky but above the existing tree canopy once they had gotten past the dead fortress. Andrew had plenty of questions he wanted to ask him, but there was just no way to even make his voice heard between the engine noise and the noise of the wind whipping around him. There was a time he swore he never wanted to get on a riding bat ever again after his trip from Lordaeron City to Tarrin Mill, but he now considered that a pleasant experience compared to this.

He wondered what else this world would throw at him before he was done as the landscape underneath him, devastated by the fel corruption, sped by to be replaced by more jungle, and then hills and mountains where he saw more military fortifications, all of them resembling the Orcs' style of building. These on the western edges of the dying jungle didn't look abandoned, as he briefly saw brown skinned Orcs with golden tattoos and pale blue skinned Draenei in armor there going about their business together before he shot past them and over what looked like a more healthy temperate forest heading into autumn. The leaves of the trees there were orange, gold, and even a pinkish red color, though several of them looked to still have green foliage on them yet. To the northwest a vast open sea stretching into the horizon opened up, and next to it, backed up against a mountain range, and rapidly approaching them, grew what looked like a massive city, though one with architecture unlike anything he'd ever seen. It was full of spires and domes which boasted violet and sapphire crystals brimming with some kind of energy. Several tranquil pools of water could be seen, and gardens, and higher up on terraces were what looked like whole neighborhoods of spired and domed residences with architectural lines that seemed to be inspired by both crystalline and organic structures. The city was as beautiful as it was alien to him, and easily as large as or larger than Lordaeron City in Tirisfal Glades. The city spread out right up to the coastline where a large harbor sat. Though even here, there looked to still be the scars from a war which had been fought as the rusty remains of hulking ships which had been sunk could be seen in the waters of the harbor.

But as magnificent as the city appeared to be, what soon caught Andrew's eyes and held them was what hovered above it. There were five structures, one main one and four smaller satellite structures clustered around it. He couldn't see anything underneath them which might have supported them from the ground but open air. The undersides of each of the structures appeared to be rounded like an egg and made from massive glowing crystals which protruded out like gigantic spikes or even fins. Above this, the four satellites had metal structures which flowed organically upwards like the visor of a helmet until they merged again with the gigantic crystals which continued upwards like towers. Two of the structures' crystals glowed a deep violet, while the third and fourth glowed sapphire and ruby. The central structure was much, much larger. It looked to have walls which ran in a circle around a platform interrupted by six gates. These walls surrounded a violet crystal and bronze metal tower which reached skywards. The five structures which could only be described as "celestial" in appearance absolutely dominated the skyline of the city, and like the machine which now carried him, they too shone with the Light, a great spire of the sacred luminescence rising from the crest of the central tower straight into the sky like a beacon.

Andrew could feel the presence of the Light everywhere around him as the war machine brought him in to the city. It was as strong as that day in Lordaeron's Cathedral when Jeshua walked in and cleansed it from every possible shadow which had been there. And through the presence of the Holy Light surrounding him, he felt the presence of his teacher stronger and more tangible than he had in the weeks since Andrew had watched him ascend into the sky until the Holy Light exploded across the sky and he was gone.

_This is a sacred city._ Andrew thought to himself. He then questioned internally, _Why did you want me to come here, Jeshua? These people already have the Light. It's everywhere here._

"I surround them, but they don't know who I am." Andrew was so surprised at, not just feeling, but hearing his teacher's voice audibly within him that a tremor of shock went through him. Jeshua's voice sounded sad when it spoke to him. "These don't know me as I am, and the harm they are causing because of it..." The voice trailed off before continuing.

"Jeshua?" Andrew asked, still unable to even hear his own voice over the noise.

"Many have died needlessly, and all in the name of the Light." His teacher's voice came to him again. "I never wanted this."

"What do you want me to do, teacher?" Andrew asked as the machine made its final approach to what looked like some kind of a platform jutting out high on one of the spired towers where other machines just like it looked to be stored and waiting to be used.

"I want you to tell them who I am. Tell them everything you heard and saw from me. They have been blinded to me even though I surround them. Restore their sight in my name, Andrew, just as you restored Grayson Shadowbreaker's."

The machine touched down its metal feet to the platform and was unwrapping its mechanical arm from him as he responded, "I will, teacher. Whatever it takes."

His own feet touched the ground and he found himself a little unsteady and shaken from the experience, but otherwise in decent condition.

The Draenei piloted his flying golden mechanical construct over to where the others still stood, and powered it down, climbing out of the thing's cockpit. He then inspected it briefly, attached some kind of hoses to it in a couple of different places, then returned to the human whose ears were still ringing from the engine noise.

"I apologize for the rough traveling conditions." The Draenei pilot told him sincerely. "I had no other options at the moment for transporting you. There are no functioning teleportation pads installed near the citadel. We have tried, but the fel corruption burns out their circuitry over a very short time and they must be constantly repaired."

Andrew wanted to say that it was no problem, but he nodded his understanding at the pilot instead. The light blue skinned man looked as though he could have been related to his friend and fellow Emissary, Vasuuvata, although Vasuuvata had never worn plate armor as far as the fisherman knew. "Yeah, it was a heck of a trip. Not sure I'd want to repeat it if you don't mind my saying so."

"Not at all. Let me introduce myself properly. I am Vindicator Malud." The Draenei replied. "It has been a long time since any of us have seen your people, over three decades."

"Yeah, so I've heard." Andrew replied. "My name's Andrew." He extended his hand to shake the Draenei's who returned the gesture.

"How fares Azeroth and its people?" Malud asked after gesturing politely for Andrew to follow him into a nearby arched entryway. "I myself fought alongside many brave warriors who flew the lion's standard against the Iron Horde."

"It's doing real well, now. Especially after Jeshua came." Andrew responded as he followed the Draenei.

"Really? And who is this Jeshua?" The Draenei asked.

"Well, friend let me tell you all about him." The fisherman responded, and then proceeded to do just that as a dark bronze metal door slide open in front of them and, they having walked through, closed behind them.

*Author's Note:

I realize that Oculeth is not in Orgrimmar in-game, but in Dazar'alor. However, in this timeline, the events of Battle for Azeroth were circumvented by Jeshua's appearance, death, and resurrection. Thus, no Zandalari mission, no Kul Tiran mission, and there would be no reason for the Chief Telemancer to be working in Dazar'alor. In this story, I placed him in what I felt would be the most logical position he might be given in the Horde following the events of Legion, given someone of his brilliance and experience, keeping him close to the central Horde government apparatus applying his talents to maintaining and creating new and stable portals.


	5. Chapter 5

Resistance – Part 2

On the Alternate Draenor, in Shattrath City...

"In the Light, we are all one." She said, exhaling slowly as she said it.

High Exarch Yrel knelt that evening on a violet cushion made for just that purpose as she attempted to meditate. Her familiar mantra fell from her lips. A single candle burned in front of her on a stand drawing her focus. Her personal chambers in Shattrath City were spartan. She did not claim ownership of a large house like a nobleman or anyone of great importance. Instead she chose to reside in a small apartment not much larger than the cell she had occupied during happier times as an acolyte at the great Temple of Karabor in Shadowmoon Valley. There was a bed, a desk for writing with several books and scrolls scattered on it, a small area for cooking and dining, and a lavatory closet for her personal needs.

"In the Light. we are all one." She intoned again.

Her mind was ablaze with questions which she needed to sort through. Those questions had been brought on by the arrival of the human called Andrew from Azeroth and the story he told. She would have put those questions immediately to the Lightmother or A'dal, but they had not answered her for months. They had answered no one, and no one had been granted access to Tempest Keep to seek their wisdom.

Andrew's arrival had been brought to the attention of herself and the other Exarchs by the Vindicator Malud who had been patrolling the Tanaan Jungle. She had not seen a human in more than three decades since they returned to their own world. None of her people had. And the story he came with! The Holy Light itself had taken mortal form as a human name Jeshua! He had healed the undead and restored them to be among the fully living! He had transformed their entire world through his death and then had defeated Death itself and resurrected himself before ascending and leaving their world!

The story the stranger told was fantastic at best, but something within her wouldn't dismiss it and urged her to believe it. There was so much to it that seemed ridiculous, contrary to what she knew of the Light, and unbelievable. She would have dismissed it outright as the ravings of a madman, but she and the other Exarchs saw the Light in the human's eyes. They could feel the Sacred Presence even as he spoke. There was no mistaking it.

"In the Light, we are all one." The words fell once more from her lips slowly as she exhaled.

They had set him up in guest rooms while they digested what they had been told, and what they had been told confused and disturbed Yrel immensely. This human was absolutely convinced that this human had been the Holy Light incarnate. Why would the Light choose a human and not one of her own people? Why would the Light incarnate, knowing what was best for them, just restore and redeem them regardless of what they, not knowing what was best for them, wanted? Why would the Light incarnate allow himself to be tortured and murdered? And what did it all of it mean for her and her people?

The void, the fel, the powers of death; they were all evil. They were all corruption and needed to be purified by the Light's own holiness. All those who refused to see that were too far gone and needed to be cleansed themselves so that they could think straight. There was no choice to be made or given. The Light must be victorious over all.

"In the Light, we are all one." The words of her mantra the only sounds in her chambers.

But, according to Andrew, this "Emissary of Jeshua," the Light incarnate would not force the Light's healing and purity on anyone regardless of what powers they aligned themselves with. He judged no one, whether they accepted him or not. He would not even carry a weapon or defend himself in any way. If this is what the Light wanted to show itself to people as, why had the Lightmother encouraged them to march across Draenor and subjugate the entire world under the Light's embrace? Why had so much blood been spilled? Could the Lightmother really have been so wrong? Could Yrel have been so wrong?

It was madness, and yet… she could sense the Light within this human who claimed to speak for the Light incarnate. There was a peace radiating off of him, and a quiet joy which only the Light could produce. It seemed impossible, but it was almost like being in the presence of one of the holy naaru, and she couldn't explain it.

After several frustrating minutes of attempting to quiet her mind, she let out a deep sigh and blew out the candle.

"Why won't you answer me?" She said out loud in a low voice. "I did everything you instructed. I kept the path you taught, Lightmother. I don't know what to do now. This human makes me question everything. Was it really the wrong path?"

The Prophet Velen would have known what to do. She was certain of that. He had been her mentor, a wise figure who had been almost like a father to her. But he had died during the last war. He had given everything he had to redeem the naaru K'ara who had remained at Karabor up until Tempest Keep had arrived. She missed his wisdom and guidance, even after thirty-six years.

_There is no darkness that the Light cannot pierce._ She remembered Velen's last words to her before demonstrating the truth of them with his own sacrifice to save the naaru from the darkness which had overtaken it, and so save all of them from the darkness the Orc warlock Ner'zhul had meant to spread across Draenor. She had taken those words to heart, and had believed them with everything she had. She had believed that the darkness of the Mag'har would be lifted, and for many it had. They had chosen the Light. But then why not the warchief? Why had the others chosen death before submission to the Light?

She hadn't enjoyed their deaths. She hated them, and never wanted them. She never wanted any of this. She would have been perfectly content to remain as an acolyte in the temple for the rest of her life, and having the Prophet chide her for neglecting her studies while she played with children in the village. It had been the Mag'har with their "Iron Horde" which had torn that, and her mentor, away from her forever. Even so, she had sought to follow the Light, forgive, and live in peace with them after the war had ended. She had only wanted to bring them the Light. Honestly, what else was there? What other truth could possibly exist? There was no alternative that did not lead back into the shadow. Why couldn't they see that?

She still remembered Draka's face, the last Mag'har overlord and Frostwolf chieftain's widow, the day she fell as clearly as she remembered Durotan's. That campaign had been six months ago. The last Mag'har garrison had fallen and with it so had Nagrand. All of Draenor had been brought under the rule of the Light. But Draka's face, the betrayal, anger, and pain which were written across it, was burned into her mind. Yrel had meant to capture her like she did with Grommash Hellscream, but it was not meant to be. Draka's battlecry before it was cut off still rang in Yrel's ears.

"Could we have really been so wrong?" Yrel asked again into the empty apartment. And then a determination had hardened within her as she rose to her hooves. "I have to know."

If the naaru would not answer her, then she would pound on their door until they did. For everything she had done in their name, she felt in that moment that they owed her that much.

Elsewhere in Shattrath City,

_Knock! Knock!_

Andrew had been resting quietly that evening in the guest house he had been lent use of when he heard the rapping at the metallic sliding entry door of the apartment. A lot had happened that day, and needing time to process didn't quite cover it.

He had known Vasuuvata, the Draenei woman and fellow Emissary who was now like a sister to him, and had seen a few Draenei folks before, but he'd never been to the islands they now called home on Azeroth. He'd heard of but never seen the Exodar, the crashed ship which had become their home capital since coming to Azeroth. The crystalline architecture blending with organic lines and shapes all around him now was fascinating for him to see and experience, but it was also a little overwhelming. He felt way out of place and in over his head. Never in all of his life had he ever thought he'd be where he was and doing what he had been doing earlier that day.

He had spent several hours earlier in the day telling Jeshua's story and relating everything he had seen and heard from his teacher just like Jeshua wanted him to. His audience had been a council of what the Draenei pilot had called _Exarchs_. He didn't know exactly what an Exarch was, but they were clearly the ones in power there. On the perimeter of the rounded council chamber, there were more Draenei in armor standing guard. There were also a number of brown skinned Orcs there whose eyes blazed with the golden white Light which had become so dear to him, one of whom numbered among the Exarchs even.

He had seriously then began to doubt the need for him to even be there. _These folks already have the Light,_ he had thought to himself again and again, _and there aren't any undead or Demon Hunters that I've seen or heard of since coming here. I don't get it, Jeshua. Why's you send me here?_

But as much as he could sense the Light around him, the more he spoke to them, the more he got the sense that they were increasingly uncomfortable with his story. At first, having recognized his race as being from Azeroth and the Alliance who had helped them, he had been welcomed with little reservation. But when he was finished, he could see questioning and disbelieving looks on several faces, some could have even been taken as hostile though no one said anything openly. Others appeared to be in deep thought about his words. The Orc who seemed to hold the position of Exarch, a huge, overly muscled man with glowing white gold tattoos seemed more intent on his words than the others.

What was strange to him was that the hostility really began when he spoke about Jeshua being adamant that it had to be the person's own choice whether to be restored or not. His teacher wouldn't force it on anyone, and had waited patiently, even up to his own death, for the undead queen Sylvanas Windrunner to finally come to him willingly rather than just change her against her will. After Andrew had explained that, he felt a kind of unease and chilling effect coming from several of the Draenei leaders.

Thing of it was, he didn't know why that should disturb or upset them so much. The Holy Light he had come to know personally was all about healing, forgiveness, mercy, and redemption. It may not like someone turning away from it, but it wasn't going to force its gifts on them. And for him, the Holy Light had a name and a face who had personified all of that. For a people so committed to the Light as these folks seemed, none of that should have been a surprise, he had felt.

Andrew rose from where he had been watching the daylight recede over the rest of Shattrath's domed buildings and the city's own artificial lighting come on outside a large window. The guest house was a small, one story, two room structure located in a whole neighborhood of such domiciles high up on a ledge overlooking the rest of the city. Even though it was sparsely decorated, It felt somewhat luxurious and roomy to him after living in Lordaeron Cathedral's cloister apartments with his brother, Peter, and other Emissaries for weeks.

_Knock! Knock!_ The rapping came at the door again as he approached it.

He found the wall panel control which the Draenei guard had showed him upon bringing him there and touched the crystalline face which he was told would open the door. It slid open to reveal the huge, brown skinned orc with black colored beard and shaved head he had seen in the council chamber earlier. Flanking him, though facing away from the door were two Draenei who appeared to be standing watch. Both were a surprise to him. He hadn't realized that a guard had been posted on him.

"May I enter, human?" the Orc Exarch asked more politely than he would have expected. Maybe it was a prejudice he had grown up with, he considered, but he always thought Orcs to be a more rude or savage kind of people.

"Yeah, sure, uh… Exarch." Andrew replied, using the title he thought the Orc held. Truth was, social graces and niceties weren't really his strong suit either. How did one address an Orc politely?

The Orc inclined his head slightly in acceptance before entering the residence, allowing the door to slide closed behind him as he did, leaving the guards where they were outside.

"How can I help you?" Andrew asked in a friendly tone as the Orc came to stand in the middle of the main living space of the small housing unit.

He had gotten to know the Orc grunts in Tarrin Mill a little when he was there over the past week. They weren't ones for small talk to be sure, but overall they seemed like decent men who were committed to their duty. The Orc Exarch in front of him struck Andrew as though cut from the same cloth, but seemed like he had a larger burden to carry than those soldiers had. And that burden was written in the Exarch's Light filled eyes, and the tension he carried with him as he walked.

"The tale you told today, outsider, was, shall we say, incredible at best." The Orc told him. "For many on the council, it strained credulity past its breaking point. There was much debate as to what to do with you after your tale."

Andrew remained quiet as the Orc spoke, letting him finish. The fisherman preferred the time to think over how he might respond, and didn't want to give an answer until everything had been laid out in front of him. In this, he was less impulsive than his brother tended to be.

"I need to know for certain, human, if the story you told was true. Swear by the Holy Light itself and tell me." The Orc Exarch told him, a deadly seriousness in his expression.

Andrew paused for a minute before responding. He'd rarely lied in his life, and those he had grown up with would never have doubted his word. It confused him a little that his word might be doubted, and in truth, it stung a little. But he answered, "I swear by the Light, every word of it. I saw it all with my own eyes."

The Exarch stared hard at the human's face for several moments, studying it for any hint of a lie or fabrication. After those moments had passed he declared in a low voice before turning away to face the large bay window which overlooked the city, "I believe you."

In spite of his declaration, the Orc did not seem any less uneasy or more relaxed. He put his left arm on the transparent glass and leaned into it pensively.

"Is there a problem with that?" Andrew asked, sensing the answer himself.

The Orc ignored the question for the moment, answering it only by a slight turn of the Exarch's head to his left and towards Andrew acknowledging that he had heard it before facing the city again directly. The silence answered the Emissary's question just as well or better than words could have.

Then the Exarch asked a question of his own as he faced the evening Shattrath skyline, "Why did you come to Draenor, human? Why did you feel the need to bring this news of Jeshua to us who have nothing to do with what happens on your world?"

Andrew considered the question before answering. He was certain the reason would strain credulity as well, but it was the truth. So, he answered honestly and directly, "Because Jeshua told me to."

"Was this before he flew up into the sky and disappeared?" The Orc's free hand balled into a fist before relaxing, only a trace of sarcasm ringed his words.

"No." Andrew replied. "When Jeshua gave us the cup to drink, it sort of created a connection between him and us. Somehow, he's always with me. It was through that connection he told me to come here."

After another moment, the Orc responded in a low voice, "In the Light, we are all one."

"Yeah, we are." Andrew responded.

The Orc then stood up straight, and turned back to face Andrew, asking, "What do you know of the history of our world?"

"To be honest, not much. I didn't even know you folks were here until almost a week ago when a friend I met told me about you." Andrew replied. "I know about something called the Iron Horde and a big war fought against it by everyone else it seemed. But beyond that, not a whole lot."

The Exarch considered this. "There was a great war which spanned across our entire world. That war was started by my father, Grommash Hellscream, chieftain of the Warsong Clan and Warchief of the Iron Horde, who was deceived into attempting to conquer not only this world, but yours as well. Many Draenei were slaughtered. My people learned almost too late that it had been through the machinations of the Burning Legion and a warlock called Gul'dan who eventually forced the demon's blood and the fel energies upon some of us, and opened doorways to invite the foul demons in to Draenor. It took the armies and resources of both your world and mine to put it to a halt and lift the deception from my father's eyes. I was born after that, in a time of peace when both Orcs and Draenei, and even Ogres, attempted to work together to rebuild after the destruction that war had cost. The High Exarch Yrel, who presided over the council meeting today, was among those my father counted as friends and I grew up knowing her as such.

"In the years that followed, after I had reached the age of maturity, the naaru had come to further assist and bring the message of the Holy Light to everyone, Draenei, Orcs, and Ogres alike. The High Exarch reached out to us with the Light's message, and I was among the first to respond and receive the Light's purity and redemption. It is not a decision I have ever been made to regret. But not all of my people received that message as warmly as I did.

"I believed, and still believe, that the path of healing and honor for our people was and remains the path of the Holy Light. But my people had been tricked into subjugation and slavery before by powerful beings promising power. They did not see the Light the way I did. My father especially denounced the gift the naaru were offering."

Here the Exarch paused his story as if to compose his thoughts before speaking again. "The naaru told us that my people, the uncorrupted _Mag'har_, had been corrupted and their rejection of the Light would be their own damnation and destruction of our world. They were not thinking straight, and if they only saw the truth of the Light for themselves, they would understand. We were told to round up as many of them as we could and bring them to the naaru where they would cleanse them of their delusions and enlighten their understanding. As much as possible, they were not to be hurt. But many Mag'har resisted and chose to fight and die instead."

Andrew listened to the Orc's own tale. As the Exarch spoke, there was a tremor of emotion and uncertainty which edged his voice. In truth, the fisherman didn't know what to say or how to respond to what he was being told. When the Orc went quiet and finished his story, he asked the human, "Tell me, human, is this what your Jeshua would have done? Or would he have done things differently?"

"I never saw the teacher force what he offered on anyone." Andrew responded, his own voice emotional as the cause of the Orc's burden became clear to him. "He always taught us to trust in the Light, and to not give back violence for violence. He lived it too. If someone had told him 'no' he'd have wished him well and gone his way, though I didn't see too many turn down what he was offering, to be honest. But that was a different place, and different people with different issues. I remember a time when we had all been captured by undead assassins who were debating about whether or not to kill us there where they found us, or make us walk where they wanted to take us."

"And your teacher destroyed those undead assassins?" The Orc asked.

"In a way, I suppose he did, but not in the way you think. He turned himself and us over to them and offered for all of us to walk back to their town to make it easier for them!" At this memory, Andrew laughed out loud. "He was just pleasant as could be while we were all being marched to our deaths!"

"What happened?" The Exarch became intrigued.

"Well, to make a long story short, when we got there, he told all the undead in the town that the Light had sent them a message, and that message was himself. Then he prayed, and touched the ground, and the whole town full of undead were restored to living flesh." Andrew told him. "The one calling for our deaths the loudest actually became a good friend of mine."

"So your teacher did make them accept the Light against their choice." The Orc observed.

Andrew shook his head. "That's not how I understood it at all, friend. Every undead person I ever talked to, when it came down to it, wanted to be made alive again from the highest noble to the lowest criminal. It's just that all of them had given up hope until Jeshua came and made it happen. And not everyone stayed to listen to what he had to say. A lot of folks did, but he never made them."

"Hmph." The Orc responded, digesting this information. "What do you know of the naaru, human?"

"Not a lot, just things I've been told. Mostly good, some things that seemed a little sketchy. It depends on who's telling the story." Andrew then called to mind a story Syloren, a former Demon Hunter also restored by Jeshua, had told him. "A friend of mine told me a story a couple of weeks ago about one of the naaru. It was back during the Legion war when the Burning Legion invaded my world. The Army of the Light in my world took the fight to the Legion on their own home turf. When they got there, they found a naaru called Xe'ra. My friend had been what they called a Demon Hunter at the time. It's a long story, but his people followed another Night Elf called Illidan who had stolen the demons' powers in order to destroy them. This naaru had been convinced that Illidan was a chosen one meant to destroy the Legion, but tried to burn away the demon stuff that made Illidan powerful against his will too. It didn't end well. Illidan ended up destroying the naaru in what Syloren told me was self-defense. He didn't want his choice taken away either. My friend told me that story because he said that he didn't want anything to do with the Holy Light for a long time after what had happened to Illidan. It was only because Jeshua saved his life without demanding anything from him that he even listened to him."

"Are you then saying the naaru, those who speak for the Light and are born of the Light itself, can be wrong?" The Exarch questioned, his face growing grave and serious. "You would tread carefully here in speaking of the holy naaru in such a way. Such talk is blasphemy."

"I honestly don't know." The fisherman replied. "Maybe some of them are, maybe some of them aren't. Maybe in trying to do the right thing they end up making things worse just like we do sometimes. You'd think that they'd know better all things considered, but still."

"The idea that the naaru, beings so close to the Light itself, could make mistakes..." The Exarch trailed off, clearly disturbed by the thought. "What you speak could be called heresy."

Andrew continued, "Vasuuvata, another friend of mine who's a Draenei said she'd had a completely different experience when she knew a naaru in the Exodar. So did another man I met a little while ago who'd known one for years even when he was still undead. That was Bishop Faol. From what I gathered, it seemed like those naaru wouldn't have even considered what Xe'ra had done, much less what these here told you folks to do. Truth is, before I'd heard Syloren's story, anything I'd ever heard about them had always been more like what I knew from the teacher. The naaru might be born from the Light, but they're not the Light itself and maybe they can make mistakes just like we can. It seems to me, regardless of how good their intentions might be, they don't always speak for it or do things how it would do them."

"Mistakes." The Orc grunted as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. "Mistakes that cost the lives of people I counted as both friends and family. Mistakes that we followed as though the will of the Light itself. Even if the holy naaru were capable of such things, 'Mistakes' is not the word I would have chosen, outsider."

Andrew nodded his agreement. "Yeah, I agree with you. It's a lousy word to describe it, but when it gets down to the bare bones that's what it is. Unless I'm wrong, it's on the same level of mistake that you said your people made during the war here. A lot of people died then too. Thing of it is, everything we do has some kind of a consequence to it. Usually, if something you do is helpful it's got helpful consequences, and if it's hurtful it's got hurtful consequences whether anyone meant for anyone to get hurt or not. We can't always control how those consequences will affect someone. As I heard it told, even the prince who caused the undeath which Jeshua fixed was trying to do what he thought was the right thing at first too, but then it spiraled out of his control. He also made this kind of a monumental mistake and it eventually cost everyone in his kingdom not only their lives, but their souls too; including his own. Someone once told me the road to damnation is paved with good intentions, and he kind of had a point."

"So what then?" the Orc asked. "Do we forget about doing what is right?"

"Depends on what you mean by what's right." Andrew answered. "You know, the teacher taught us a lot of things, but one thing he never talked about was 'doing what's right.' That never seemed to come up as a requirement for him or the Light. He talked a lot about forgiving those that had hurt you, loving others and having compassion on them. He told us that the Light loves all of us, and that the Holy Light was compassion and love itself. He also talked a lot about not judging other people for how they act, and seeing past that to why they were doing what they were doing. From what I've seen, everybody's got their own opinions about what the right thing might be and they might not always agree. Jeshua's big thing was to love them anyway, even if you disagreed with them. Sure, he'd try to make some folks see reason, but he'd never try and force them to agree with him. Truth is, as another friend of mine told me, Jeshua raised an entire town of people who'd been dead for thirty years right in front of a bunch of holy priests. One of them happened to be that friend's wife. The whole place lit up with the Holy Light. And they still accused him of some kind of evil death magic even when the power of the Holy Light was right in front of their faces. They thought they were in the right too at the time. Point is, the Holy Light isn't about forcing your idea of right and wrong on other people. It's about forgiving them, healing them, loving on them like the Light loves, and being willing to sacrifice yourself for them no matter who they are or what they've done. They spend enough time with the Light itself, listen to it when it says something, and keep doing that, they'll come around on their own. That's what I got from knowing Jeshua."

"And those who don't?" the Orc questioned, a personal interest evident in his voice and not merely theoretical.

"You pray for them. My understanding is that eventually, the Light's going to win, and it's going to be all there is. You, me, the world, we'll all be a part of it somehow. Jeshua kept talking about something he called the Kingdom of Light and that it was coming. No matter what else happens, the Holy Light is going to be the only thing going eventually. Like you said, 'We are all one in the Light.' I believe that deep inside me. I know it is. I can't tell you what's going to happen to those people who refuse the Holy Light, but I can't imagine they're going to be enjoying themselves at that point. Doesn't mean that the Light wants it that way. But if a person absolutely rejects the Light and then gets surrounded by nothing but… well, it's their choice to be miserable, and we can't do anything else about it." Andrew told him.

The Orc was quiet for some time before he responded, "I hear the Light's truth in your words, troublesome as they may be. You have given me much to think on, outsider. I must take my leave of you now."

The large, overly muscled brown skinned warrior then moved back towards the entryway of the house.

"You can call me Andrew, Exarch." The human told him as the Orc pressed his fingers on the wall plate.

"Andrew then." The Orc, turning back to him replied and nodded slightly. "I am called Golmash Hellscream."

"Golmash Hellscream." The human repeated, testing the name. "I think I've heard that name before, or something like it."

"I do not doubt it. The name 'Hellscream' is legendary regardless of where you come from." He responded with a half smile, though there was a sorrow in his eyes as well. "Those who came before me have all been great chieftains of the Warsong clan. I would have been more surprised had you not known it."

The gates of the central tower of Tempest Keep, high above Shattrath City…

High Exarch Yrel materialized on the teleportation platform immediately in front of the main gate of the naaru fortress late that evening. The air was chilled around her as she adjusted to her new surroundings, though it didn't take long. She had made this trip many, many times in the past. That high up, she could see not only the whole of Shattrath City, but all of Talador as well. The lamps lining the roads through its forests wound their way like veins of light through a leaf. In the distance to the south, the night lights of Auchindoun shone brightly. It was quiet up there, peaceful. It was certainly far more peaceful even at just the gates of Tempest Keep than it ever would be on the ground, and in the city where so many things demanded her attention.

She turned away from the sight beneath her and towards the gate itself. It was formed of an energy barrier across a red-gold colored archway built into a very thick and solid wall around the base of the fortified tower. In spite of it being a structure suspended by fields of energy using a science which she didn't fully understand, the platform beneath her hooves always felt just as solid as secure as if she were standing on the stone walkways and plazas of the temple of Karabor in Shadowmoon.

She had waited for months for some kind of summons or answer from the naaru. She would never have dared to enter Tempest Keep without either explicit or implicit permission from the holy ones before now. But the barrier had never been up for so long, and they had never been so silent either. She approached the crystal controls for the barrier, removed the gauntlet from her right hand, and placed her palm over them. As High Exarch of the Army of the Light, she would have been one of the few mortals who might have been given access to lower the barrier for entry; at least, so she believed. Out of reverence for the holy ones, she hadn't put it to the test until now.

Her light azure colored bare palm caressed the crystal and the barrier of energy dissolved in front of her, opening the way forward.

It was only then that she became aware that she had been holding her breath. It was perhaps silly, but she had wondered over these past few months if the naaru had found her somehow unworthy and that was the reason why they had not responded. Clearly if the door would open for her, that wasn't the case, she reasoned. But there had been that fear until she saw the barrier drop.

But there was no warm welcome, no touch of A'dal's mind to her own, or M'uru's, or the Lightmother's. There was no hint that they had acknowledged her presence at all. There was just… nothing.

Yrel stood there stunned at the lack of reception. The naaru, the Lightmother especially, had filled that space in her life which had been left empty by the deaths of the Prophet Velen and her sister, Samaara. She had been both a mentoring parent and wise older sister to her, and had always accepted and welcomed her, and listened patiently to whatever was troubling Yrel's heart. The silence which Yrel now felt after months of no contact stung her.

_What have I done wrong?_ She asked herself once more as her eyes watered briefly at the thought of being rejected by her and not knowing why.

After a brief minute, the barrier raised itself once more, bringing her back to herself and to the present and she put her hand to it again to lower it. Once it was down, she steeled herself and passed through the archway and into the inner courtyard surrounding this central tower of the five. Tempest Keep was made up of this one central structure simply known as "the Eye" and four satellite structures: the Mechanar, the Arcatraz, the Botanica, and the Exodar. She had been told once that, in an alternate reality, Draenor had been overrun by Orcs who had committed genocide against her people under the direction of the Burning Legion, and what remained of her people had taken the Exodar to that other world Azeroth in desperation where it had crashed and become a kind of capital city for the refugees there. She had wondered at times if there had been another "Yrel" in that reality, and if she had survived and fled to Azeroth or if she had been killed. But such speculation was merely an indulgence. Here, in her reality, the Exodar was whole and set like a bright violet jewel in the crown that was the naaru's interdimensional vessel and base of operations for the Army of the Light.

Moving past the archway, the energy barrier raised once more behind her, a quiet hum she heard to her back. She continued on and through the entryway which led into the central tower. As she walked, she heard the click of her own hooves on the metal beneath them echo against the walls of the structure, but there was no other sound. It felt… It felt like a house where no one was home, and hadn't been for some time.

The interior of the Eye was bathed in rose and lavender colored light emanating from the crystals which formed its interior walls, melded with the dark bronze colored metals and materials. It was all familiar to her as she walked through the vestibule corridor and into the main circular chamber of the Eye. Beneath her feet, the powerful rose colored energies which powered the vessel could be seen in their reaction chamber through a transparent flooring. But again, there was no one else present.

There had always been the presence of the naaru touching her mind during previous visits, as well as those other Draenei who had come to sit quite literally at the naaru's feet and absorb their wisdom. In that very chamber A'dal would hover as a gathering of her people would sit and listen to his instruction, not with words so much as by thoughts, impressions, and images he would share with them mind to mind. There had been no confusion then, only the clarity of the Light as A'dal understood it.

_Where has A'dal gone?_ She asked internally. This silence, the emptiness of the Eye's central chamber was all wrong. "Where are you?" She asked loudly into the silence, or as loudly as she could bring herself to speak in that place she considered nothing short of sacred. Fear began to creep into her mind more than it had been as a thought she had once considered impossible began to appear far more credible.

_Have the naaru abandoned us?_ The thought scared her more than she would have thought. She felt as a child lost in a marketplace, unable to find its mother.

With a new urgency, she turned to her right and moved quickly up the ascending ramp which led deeper into the vessel. She knew the layout of the Eye well, and passed through archways and up corridors deeper into the vessel to reach the bridge, the command center of the vehicle where before the Lightmother had allowed her to go.

The bridge of Tempest Keep was designed much like the rest of the vessel. Upon first sight, one might have mistaken it for just another open, empty chamber of the vessel, but Yrel knew better. There were no seats like one might expect for a pilot or other operational staff. Any controls there were might be mistaked for variations in crystalline patterns in the walls and outcroppings of the chamber. The reason for it was simpler than it seemed. This was a vessel that had not been built by mortal hands, and it was not intended to be operated by them either.

Like the rest of the ship, the bridge was strikingly empty as she entered. At the opposite end from the entry was a series of rose colored glass panels which, if they were meant to be windows, seemed utterly useless for their opacity. Beneath these panels was what she knew was a shelf of panels which were the operational controls of the interdimensional ship. She marched directly towards these controls, recalling the Lightmother's instructions about them to the fore of her mind.

She placed her hand over a particular section of small crystals and concentrated on what she wanted to see. Above and in front of her, one of the opaque rose colored panels darkened and changed colors until she could see figures moving around in scenes played out from different parts of the ship months before. The images flashed across the viewscreen as she focused on different time periods close to when the naaru ceased contacting her or anyone from the city below. The vessel made nearly constant recordings of its goings on with its internal sensory apparati. The Lightmother had shown it to her once in the event there was something she might want to review.

She spent some time working her way through them. She didn't know how long of a time it took as she watched the comings and goings of the naaru, the Draenei, and even some of the Orcs who had come to listen and learn from the holy ones. It felt like both mere minutes and hours at the same time.

And then she sped past some footage until she reached a point where the vessel was empty. Mentally, she focused on a request to know when that footage was and the markings for a time and date appeared at the top of the viewscreen. Seeing when it occurred she then focused on going backwards until she saw movement again. Finally, she found the last point in the footage where there was anyone left in the Eye. The markings for it put it at just around two months prior. There were none of either her people or the Orcs in the Eye or anywhere in Tempest Keep at the time.

Instead, she watched as A'dal had been alone in the central chamber where he usually remained in contemplation. Suddenly, he was joined by a humanoid figure. She could not tell how the figure had entered the chamber. One moment he was not there, and the next moment he was after a brief flash of light similar to a teleportation pad. Except there was no teleportation pad in the central chamber. The light never dissipated away from the humanoid figure as he appeared to engage in a conversation with A'dal. For his part, the naaru seemed deferential to the new, light shrouded figure.

She focused on trying to hear the words the figure was saying to A'dal, but as much as she mentally requested the audio recording which she knew had been made, there was no sound. The man had spoken no audible words, but appeared to be communicating the same way the naaru did; with his mind.

_How is that possible?_ She wondered, not recognizing the man.

After several minutes of the wordless conversation, there was another flash of light, larger than the first one, and both the man and A'dal were nowhere to be seen. Checking the footage from other parts of the vessel, the other naaru had disappeared at exactly the same time, appearing as though answering a call and then vanishing in a blaze of light.

She returned to the footage of A'dal, paused it, and focused on bringing the man closer into the image and into finer detail. When she did, she couldn't believe what her eyes were telling her. The man appeared to be made of solid Light. But that wasn't the most astonishing thing.

The man was neither Draenei nor Orc. The figure that A'dal had seemed so deferential to was one of the _humans _from Azeroth.

"What happened here?" She asked aloud, her mind almost refusing to comprehend what her eyes were telling her.

She reviewed the sensory footage again and again until she was certain of two facts which frightened her deeply. The first scared her enough. The naaru were gone. Vanished into the Light from Draenor without the need of their vessel. But the second truly frightened her for how powerless it made her feel. This light made human to whom A'dal deferred, whoever he was, was responsible for it.

She fell to a sitting position at the realization. The naaru had left them, had left her, and she and her people were alone and without guidance from the Light for the first time in decades.

Yrel sat there alone on the bridge and drew her knees up to her chest, feeling lost and alone.

In the detention tower of Shattrath City, the next morning…

Grommash Hellscream sat on the padded shelf which had served for the last year for him as a bed in the Draenei cell. Shafts of natural sunlight streamed into the detention area he was held in, adding to the artificial rose and violet lighting which came from various crystalline sources.

_The Draenei do love their crystals_. The old Orc warchief mused. _They use them for everything. I think they'd serve me crystals for every meal if they thought I could eat them._

His actual breakfast of roasted talbuk and fruit lay on a metal tray on the floor half eaten. The cooks have taken the time to carefully de-bone the talbuk meat before serving it to him. The first time they had served meat to him, he had been able to fashion both a shank and a lock pick from the bones in his meal. They never made that mistake again. He had considered using one or both of his own tusks for the same after that, but they were too large to serve as good lock picks. He had not survived as long as he had as either chieftain of the Warsong clan or warchief of the clans without being resourceful.

The elder Orc was not one to waste food, even food prepared by a Draenei, but in truth his appetite had diminished from what it had been before his imprisonment. Whether it was his advanced age or just the growing confirmation that he would never leave that cell again he didn't know.

His people were gone. His son had betrayed him. And the only future he appeared to look forward to was either as a prisoner in that cell or being brainwashed into becoming one of the Lightbound. He relished neither. Every day the thought of honorably ending his own life became more and more appealing, but they had taken all means of doing that as well.

He heard the door to the detention area where he was being held slide open. Heavy metallic footfalls struck against the metal flooring of where he was being kept. They were distinct from the sounds a Draenei's hooves made. He knew instinctively who had come to visit him. It was that time of the morning. But this was slightly different. There were more than one set of footfalls. He couldn't be sure, but it sounded like a small party of soldiers with metallic boots.

Golmash's visits had been regular. Nearly every morning for the past year. Every time it had been either the same conversation or a similar one when Grommash felt like responding or acknowledging him. He pleaded for his father's soul, and Grommash would plead for his. They always ended with both men frustrated and angry. Now apparently, he had come with others.

_So, it's time_. Grommash thought. In a way, he was almost relieved.

He waited to confirm that it was Golmash, watching through the openings in his cell door. Then we he saw him, he turned his back to him without a word. The elder Orc wasn't in the mood to play the game today. He didn't want to be reminded of what his only offspring had turned into.

"I have been up all night, seeking the Light's wisdom and guidance on what to do. I believe I have received my answer." Golmash's voice said to his back.

_So he's finally decided to drag me to the naaru and turn me into one of them?_ The warchief thought to himself. A dozen scenarios ran through his mind as to possible escape routes before the weariness of it all began to drown them all. All of them involved killing his son and taking vengeance for his people, and as much as he wanted to call upon his rage and anger, they weren't as freely available as they once were.

Without turning to face him, Grommash replied in a low voice, "Then just do it and get it over with. Who knows? Maybe we'll both be happier with it." The sarcasm in his voice was meant to be sharp tongued and palpable, but it came out weaker than he had intended.

"I will." Golmash replied, his voice determined to see his decision through.

The door to Grommash Hellscream's cage opened behind him. The warchief waited for blue Draenei hands to take him and force him to wherever they would take him to be brainwashed. But they did not come. Several minutes went by, and no one entered the cell.

Frustrated, Grommash asked, "What's wrong, afraid of a tired old ghost? Come and get me if you're going to!"

"It was never the Light's will to do what we did to our people." Golmash's spoke from the open doorway in a low voice. "I couldn't see that. I wasn't listening. I am now."

_What?_ Grommash wasn't sure if he actually heard those words, or if he had begun to succumb to the hallucinations which accompanied long captivity. He turned around to look at the form of his son standing in the cell doorway. It might have been just his old eyes, but somehow, Golmash's Light forged tattoos seemed to shine brighter than they had before. His son's eyes looked bloodshot, and there were bags under them as if he had not slept. More than this, there was something in them that gave the old warchief pause. There was a sincerity, yes, but that was nothing new. Golmash was nothing if not sincere in his beliefs. No, this was different. They were the eyes of a repentant man determined to set things right.

_What has happened to him from yesterday to today?_ The warchief wondered, his suspicions aroused. _Is this some kind of a new trick_?

"I can't change the mistakes I've made in the past any more than you could change the mistakes you made with the Iron Horde decades ago. I won't blame you for hating me for what I've done to our people. But I can change what happens today, right now." The Orc Exarch told him.

"What new game is this, Golmash?" Grommash demanded. "What have the naaru put you up to this time?"

"The naaru have nothing to do with this, father." The Exarch replied.

Then those who had come with Golmash came into view behind the Exarch. Orcish eyes filled with Light and armored with Draenei forged plates and weapons edged and highlighted with golden white Light stood behind him. Grommash believed he recognized some of the grunts as having been stationed at Evermorn once upon a time. What were they all doing here?

And then Golmash's arm disappeared from view behind one of the Orcs for a moment. When it came back into view, he was holding an old, trusted friend of his father's, offering it to him handle first.

Grommash did not move to take it immediately. He could not help but suspect some kind of a trap or trick.

"Gorehowl?" Grommash asked, confused. "I could easily kill you with it right here. Why would you give my war axe back to me?"

"You could. I would not stop you. I have shed enough Orc blood in the Light's name. But the Holy Light has shown me a different path, and it starts here." The Exarch replied, and then he asked, "Are you ready to leave?"

"Where do you intend I go?" Grommash asked.

"Away from here." Golmash replied. "After that, it's your choice where you go."

The old warchief considered that, wondering where all of this was coming from. But he continued to look into the eyes of his son. There was no deception in them, no duplicity.

"Exarch, we must hurry." One of the Lightbound grunts told Golmash in a low voice.

"Patience. It must be his choice." Golmash replied. "I will not force another again."

Was Grommash dreaming? Had he finally gone insane in that jail cell? He didn't know. In that moment the other Orc, or half-Orc he had been caged with came into his mind again. The Blademaster.

"What happened to Lantressor? Will he be set free too?" The warchief asked, still staring at the offered axe.

"The Blademaster is one level beneath us. He is our next stop. After you both are out of the city, there is one more prisoner whom I must see safely away from here." The Exarch told him. "After that, it is in the hands of the Holy Light."

Grommash continued to look into his son's eyes a little longer until he was convinced there was no betrayal there. Then he stepped towards Golmash and took his axe from him. Holding it in his hands once more, he briefly considered taking of the Exarch's head with it, but then stopped himself as he remembered the Exarch's words about the Iron Horde.

"We have both made grievous mistakes which cost our people greatly. Perhaps both of us should have paid with our lives. Destiny had other plans for me. I suppose it can have other plans for you. Let's go." The warchief told him standing eye to eye with his son.

In Shattrath City, late that afternoon…

Andrew was sitting on the bed alcove when the Draenei High Exarch and several heavily armed guards burst through the door of the small house he had been staying in. They were the second contingent to visit him that day. The first had been a group of Orcs led by the same Exarch who had visited him the night before.

"We've come to get you out of here human. There isn't much time. They will come for you soon. You need to come with us. Now." Golmash had told him.

Alarmed, Andrew had asked in reply, "Why would anyone come for me? I've been here since yesterday."

"The High Exarch is blaming you and your Jeshua for the disappearance of the naaru. She says you somehow kidnapped them if such a thing is possible." The Orc replied.

"Huh?" Had been his confused reply. "That's absurd. What mortal could possibly kidnap a naaru?"

"I don't know. She is not herself since returning from Tempest Keep, but she has the other Exarchs convinced that somehow you and your teacher are responsible. If you want to avoid great suffering, you will come with us. Now." Golmash's voice was urgent.

Andrew had been about to go with them when he heard or rather felt his teacher's voice speak within him. _Don't go with him. Stay where you are and be my voice to the Exarchs._

Andrew had hesitated at that.

"What are you waiting for, human. There is no time!" Golmash was insistent.

_I will always be with you, Andrew. Even here. The Kingdom of Light comes._ Jeshua's voice was even more urgent.

Andrew had learned to trust his teacher. He also knew what Jeshua had suffered in order to restore and heal Azeroth. He made his decision. He didn't feel right about running away when Jeshua had offered himself up willingly.

"Thanks, Golmash. But I need to stay right where I am." Andrew answered him.

The Orc looked at him as though he had lost his mind. "Are you insane, human? Do you know what they will do to you?"

"The Light's telling you to do one thing, but it's telling me to do something different. We both have to follow where it leads each of us individually. I know what the consequences might be for me. Jeshua knew what they'd be for him too. He did it anyway. So will I." The Emissary responded.

_Tell him, "Blood and honor."_ Jeshua's voice told him.

"Blood and honor, friend." Andrew repeated.

The Orc looked stunned as he processed the human's words. But then he put his fist to his chest and returned the words, "Blood and honor, Andrew of Azeroth."

The Emissary's mind then snapped back to his present situation as the High Exarch marched into the domicile flanked by Draenei guards. "Andrew, Emissary of Jeshua, of Azeroth. By the authority of the Army of the Light, you are under arrest. Where are the naaru?! What have you done with them?!"

_The Kingdom of Light comes, Andrew_. Jeshua's voice went through his mind again. _I am coming to make everything new._

"The Kingdom of Light comes, friend. It's almost here." Andrew told her in response.

Confusion and anger spread over Yrel's face at his response. "How dare you mock the Holy Light, human!" She then backhanded him across the face before ordering her Draenei guards, "Take him!"

A trickle of scarlet blood dripped from Andrew's cheek from the blow. It hurt. A lot. But strangely, he was okay with that. In fact, he felt nothing but peace as they forcibly dragged him from the house in chains. "Teacher, don't hold this against them when you come. They've no idea what they're doing right now. It doesn't sound like they ever did." He prayed.

"Shut up!" He heard the Draenei woman yell at him. He didn't know how much she heard if anything, but she was clearly enraged.

_I'm coming soon, Andrew. The Kingdom is coming. She's almost awake. Hold on till the end._ The teacher's voice came to him again.

"The Kingdom of Light is coming." Andrew said again in a low voice to himself. "It's almost here."


	6. Chapter 6

Resistance part 3

On Draenor, in Shattrath City…

Andrew lay on a cold floor that might have been metal, or it might have been polished stone. The pain returned as he became conscious again. He thought he was in some kind of a prison cell, but there had been no bed or cot and no facilities for hygiene or relieving oneself. The stench from his urine and excrement which filled his trousers and sometimes exited to the floor of their own accord during his "questioning" filled the cramped space. His face and body bore numerous bruises and cuts, and scarlet spatters of his human blood could be seen on the polished armor of the Draenei woman who insisted on tormenting him herself. There was never anyone else in the cell when she entered, and the heavy door was closed behind her before she began.

He couldn't be certain how long it had been since the High Exarch had arrested him, but it had felt like a long time; more than mere hours, maybe several days. He had passed out more than once, and had no sense of how long he had been unconscious during those times. He had been given no food or water but some kind of meaty broth that was entirely liquid. It did nothing to quell the hunger pains which began, but instead intensified them and kept them going rather than allowing them to subside after a certain amount of time.

His hands were bound together with metal cuffs around his wrists, as were his ankles. During the interrogations, he had been hoisted up by his wrists until his feet were just inches off the floor making it difficult for him to breath.

Her ultimate question remained the same, "What have you done to the naaru?"

It was not a question to which the human fisherman had an answer. Not one which satisfied the white haired Draenei leader anyway. He had responded only with what the presence or "voice" of Jeshua within himself had given him, "The Light has called for them. The Kingdom of Light comes."

"Blasphemy!" She responded in frustration and shock the first time, and the second, and every time he repeated it until he simply said nothing to her demands. There was no truth he could say which would appease her.

Occasionally she demanded to know who the human was who appeared to be made of Light, though she appeared to already know the answer right away. Andrew could only think of one human who would fit that description. He had not seen what Jim, the crusty old sailor turned Emissary, had seen, but Jim had described what he had seen in Lordaeron's cathedral that day when everyone else had kept their eyes covered for fear of the magnitude of the Light which bathed the sanctuary. He believed Jim's description, and what High Exarch Yrel had described sounded just like it.

But when Andrew answered her, she again tore into him, demanding to know where he was and where he had taken the naaru. The more he tried to tell her the truth, the more desperate and off balance the High Exarch seemed, beating him with her armored fists. The metal of her gauntlets left dark bruises and tore gashes into his tanned human flesh.

She had entered once more just then and stood mere feet from where he lay. He heard her Draenei hooves hitting the floor before he saw her enter his cell. After a few minutes, he felt his wrists being jerked again, and his body was hauled into a vertical position from where he had been laying on the floor. Once more, the heavy door to the cell was closed behind her and it was just he and she.

He looked into her Draenei eyes once more. There was the same anger, frustration, and desperation as there had been every other time. He could see bags under them, and knew she hadn't slept for some time.

"I don't want to hurt you, human." Yrel told him. "I hate having to." There was a sincerity in her voice, an emotion that betrayed the truth of her words. "If you will tell me the truth, we can put an end to all of this."

"...have been..." Andrew whispered at her through sore and damaged lips and tongue. "...all of it..."

An anguished look spread across her face, and he might have sworn her eyes had watered before he felt the back of her armored gauntlet hard across his face again. Pain exploded once more.

"Why are you making me do this? What possible reason can you have for putting us both through what neither of us wants?" She demanded from him, a tear falling from this inside of her right eye.

Andrew didn't answer her, instead he let his head fall under its own weight in silence.

Yrel wiped her face with her fingertips. Except for her hooves and her head, they were the only parts of her body which remained exposed under her golden bronze armor. Closing her eyes tightly she appeared to be trying to rein in her own emotions. When she opened them again, any appearance of pity she had held before had disappeared.

"Our Priests and Paladins have lost their connection to the Light, human." She stated, her voice having taken on an edge to it. "They cannot heal. They cannot call on the Light to defend themselves. The Holy Light will not respond to us. Why? What have you done to us? Is it connected with the naaru's kidnapping? Answer me." She demanded.

"Jeshua..." Andrew started to say. It was painful for him to speak. He thought she might have fractured his jaw, but he wasn't certain.

"Damn your Jeshua!" Yrel shouted at him. "No one _human_ could be powerful enough to do what you have claimed. I spent time with your people during the war. They are only loyal to the Light when it suits them. Why would the Holy Light choose a human and not one of my own people? Why would the Light answer one of your people and not mine? We have been instructed by the naaru themselves in the Holy Light's path for twenty five thousand years! Can your race claim that? Now answer me the truth, human! What did you do to us?!"

"...didn't do… anything..." Andrew tried to respond.

Pain exploded in his mouth again as he was rewarded with the brunt of Yrel's fist to his jaw yet again. He cried out from it involuntarily. He heard and felt the cracking of more bone and not a few teeth as blood began to dribble once more through badly swollen lips.

_I'm coming soon._ Jeshua's voice flashed through his mind once more, and the pain subsided as a peace which had no rational explanation flooded his being. _She's almost awake. There's not much time left. I'm with you to the end._

Andrew knew who the "she" was. He had received a message from his "brothers" in Lordaeron shortly before leaving Tarrin Mill. _Azeroth is waking up_. Neither he nor they understood all the particulars, but the urgency to get Jeshua's cup and the message out to everyone magnified exponentially. Once she woke, the world they knew would be gone. According to Amerian's dream, it was all going to be transformed and made new. Something about what the Night Elves called the _Emerald Dream_. He didn't know how or why that would affect the people here on Draenor, but he had the urgent insistence within him that the impact of it would reach even here.

Images filled his mind of a world untouched and unscarred by civilization or wars or cataclysms. A world full of green and growing life in harmony and balance. A world where there was no sun or moon in the sky, no day and night, no darkness at all, but only the eternal presence of the Light everywhere and at all times.

_The sleeper will awaken. The Dream will become the reality._ Jeshua's voice ran through his mind and spirit.

_Crack!_ He felt another bone crack in his face, but there wasn't nearly as much pain this time.

"What are you smiling about, human?!" Yrel demanded, incensed and incredulous. "Do you think this is some kind of joke? Do you think I enjoy doing this? Don't you understand what has happened? Without the naaru, without the Holy Light, Draenor will die and everything on this world with it!"

Andrew didn't realize he'd been smiling.

"Jeshua… is… the Light..." Andrew managed to respond, his voice low and his mouth filled with blood. "...Light… knows… its own..."

Yrel backed up from him, a look of disgust crossing her features. "You're insane, human. You must be." She told him. "I learned a few things about torture when the Orcs captured me years ago. I don't want to use them on you, but I will if you force me to. You will tell me the truth eventually. I promise you."

"...already… have…" He replied. "Jeshua..."

Yrel began to circle around Andrew's hanging body. Then pain shot through his lower back as her hoof made sharp contact with his spine. He heard and felt a sickening "crunch," and then he couldn't feel his legs at all.

"What kind of magic did you use on us?!" She demanded. "Was it void? Was it fel? Answer me!"

_Just hold on. I'm with you every step of the way._ He heard his teacher's voice again. The same voice, the same presence hadn't left him since that last meal he and the other emissaries had taken with Jeshua before he died, since he had taken the cup himself. His teacher's presence had been with him constantly since Yrel had arrested him, sending peace and mitigating some, though not all of his pain at the beatings. That same presence continually asked Andrew to trust it, even without fully explaining why he had to suffer at the Draenei woman's hands.

"Why do you resist?! No one can protect you from me!" Yrel shouted at him.

"Jeshua..." He began to say, and another sharp pain struck his back higher up.

"...Kingdom of Light..." He tried to say again.

"Enough lies!" She spat at him. "Dammit I don't want to do this!"

Then, he just stopped trying to answer, and that presence within him granted him peace from that as well. He had already said enough. Saying anything more would help nothing.

Then Yrel lost all control she might have had. She continued beating him until he blacked out again. In his unconscious state he saw the green world again filled with Light.

On the road to Nagrand on Draenor…

The night seemed darker than it should have as the aged warchief gazed into the skies above him on the hillside overlooking the road. The stars seemed to shine more dimly, and the Pale Lady, the moon which dominated his world's night sky when she rose, was nowhere to be seen. He remembered the night sky of his youth, and how the celestial bodies could be so bright at times he couldn't sleep for it. But that was a different time, on a different world it seemed.

Around him four Orcs stood watch over their camp while the rest of their party slept. In all, nearly a dozen "Lightbound" Orcs had answered his son's call to free him and see him safely to what remained of their ancestral home in Nagrand two days before. He would have expected to meet heavy resistance to his escape, but it seemed no one in Shattrath or on the roads so much as batted an eye that first day. Gorehowl had remained surprisingly free of blood. When he had questioned this to the Orc Exarch who had orchestrated his release, his son's response had been, "Why should they be suspicious? We all serve the Light whether we are Orc or Draenei. As far as they know, you could be one of us, or we are just transferring you somewhere else."

"With my armor and axe in hand?" Grommash had asked, skeptical.

"Let's hope the Draenei don't look too closely." Golmash had replied.

Two days later and Grommash had yet to understand the Exarch's true motivations. Golmash had said little to him during their travel away from Shattrath City. The other Orcs, each with eyes that blazed with Light and golden white tattoos denoting their servitude to the Light, were equally as quiet about their motivations. He might have been more suspicious than he was, except he felt he knew when someone was lying to him, and he sensed none of that from his escort.

His sharp Orcish ears picked up movement behind him. Golmash had made no attempt to be stealthy as he approached. It was his warrior's senses that told him it was his son. The approach was hesitant, but not fearful. Perhaps respectful might have been the correct word.

"May I sit with you?" Golmash's voice asked from behind him.

"Hmph." Grommash had answered, gesturing to the patch of grass next to him with his left hand. "You speak like the Draenei do. You wear their armor. Pray to their deity. I would not have been surprised if you had your feet replaced with hooves or painted your skin blue." He told him.

Golmash came and sat down on the grass next to the aged Orc, crossing his legs in the same fashion. "Having respect for one's elders is something you taught me, father."

"Turning your back on our ancestors and our traditions was not something I or anyone from our clan taught you, Golmash." The warchief replied. "You betray your own clan for the Light, and now you claim to betray the Draenei for the same reason. Is that what the Light teaches? Betrayal?"

"We could have left you in that cell. I suppose we can turn around and put you back there if you'd like." Golmash replied with a half grin. "I'm certain Yrel would be happy to see you back."

"Don't mention that woman's name to me." Grommash replied testily. "I don't want to hear it spoken again."

"Fair enough." Golmash replied, though his thoughts were very much on Yrel and what the council had done with the human. Blasphemy was not a light offense. He wondered if Andrew had been thrown in the same cell he had liberated his aged father from. He had tried to free the human after freeing his father, but the human refused to come with them. The Light had apparently told them to walk different paths from one another.

There was silence between them for several moments. Then Grommash broke it, "Why would the Light tell you to free me?" He asked.

"The Lightmother was wrong to force the Light on our people. We were wrong to follow her lead. The true Light doesn't force anyone to follow it. It must be their choice." Golmash answered. "I heard an unbelievable story from a human that came to us a few days ago from Azeroth."

"A story from an outsider from Azeroth? That's what changed your mind?" Grommash said in disbelief. "Hmph. It must have been some story."

Golmash chuckled a little. "It was. It was about the Holy Light itself taking the form of a mortal and showing everyone what it was really like. This mortal never took up arms, but could command the undead back to true life, could command a typhoon like no shaman ever could, and his death transformed and healed their world. This mortal, a human named Jeshua, never forced anyone or demanded anyone to follow him or even listen to him in order to be healed or restored. He gave it freely."

"Little good it did him if he died." Grommash replied.

"According to the human, this mortal raised himself from death, fully alive, three nights after he died, and then left a week later to return to the Light to make ready for something he called the Kingdom of Light which he was bringing everywhere. The human seemed to think that might include our world too." Golmash continued.

"And you believe this?" The old warchief asked.

"The Light within me compels me to believe it. I can't really explain it better than that." Golmash responded.

"The Light and its followers are responsible for poisoning our world." Grommash retorted.

"Gul'dan and his followers were responsible for poisoning our world with the fel, father." Golmash answered, shaking his bald and bearded head. "You told me that when I was a boy. They're the ones who brought the Burning Legion and its foul poisons here. Even now, the dead zone inside Tanaan just keeps growing, and the rest of our world withers with it. The Holy Light had nothing to do with that. When I meditate, when I attempt to commune with it, all I sense is peace, and the desire to heal and right the things which have gone wrong. The Light wants to heal our world just as it healed the other world, Azeroth. I feel like this Kingdom of Light which the human spoke of is the answer we've been searching for."

Grommash went silent and didn't respond. Instead he looked up at the stars again. Then his gaze wondered to the Orcs who were standing watch. Each of them had the Light forged tattoos, and sported golden, Draenei forged armor. He knew that each of them had been brainwashed by the naaru. They had been given no choices in what they now believed or followed.

"And them?" He finally answered, gesturing to them. "Did the Light restore their choices too? Or did they just blindly follow your orders like a slave because they were told to?"

Golmash shook his head sadly at the statement, and Grommash had thought he had made his point. Then the Exarch looked at his father eye to eye and said, "You don't recognize him do you? That one you're pointing to is Groni's son, Goreth. He and I sparred together as children." Golmash then gestured to another standing watch across the ledge, "That one is Vornek, son of Daggerhand. We were rivals in the trials of manhood, and friends afterwards. Every one of these I would trust with my life, and every Mag'har here joined me when I answered the Light's call of my own free will years ago. All of these gave themselves to the Light willingly, as I did, father. When I spoke with them, it was their choice for blood and honor to help me free you. Not only for the blood and honor of our clan, but for the blood and honor of the Holy Light itself which the naaru have shamed by their actions. I understand that clearly now."

"And what about those who didn't choose freely? What happens to them?" The warchief persisted. "Do they remain the naaru's pet slaves?"

"I don't know." Golmash answered honestly. "All I can do is trust that the true Holy Light will see to them fairly and make right what we have wronged in the Lightmother's name. The truth is that the naaru have not answered anyone for months now. No one has gained entry to Tempest Keep. Yrel had informed me of her plan to go there and attempt access before I came to free you. No one knows what has happened or why they have been silent."

"Someone's coming up the road." The Orc that Golmash had named as Goreth interrupted them. "A party of Draenei on elekk-back. Well armed."

"How many?" Golmash asked, quickly rising from where he sat to join his comrade to see what he saw.

"I count six." He pointed in the direction of several heavily barded elekks coming up the road from the direction of Auchindoun which lay like a bright shining jewel to the southeast of their position.

"It doesn't look like they've seen us. Get everyone low and back against the cliff wall. With any luck, they'll pass right by." Golmash told him.

"You outnumber them more than two to one." Grommash pointed out. "It would be their slaughter."

"Exactly." The Exarch returned. "And it would be one without honor."

"You will not kill Draenei?" Grommash questioned. "After everything they've done to us?"

"I will not kill without need, regardless of their race. That is not the path which the Light teaches." Golmash returned. "We let them pass by unmolested if possible."

In Shattrath City…

Andrew's eyes opened once more. A dull pain running from his face all throughout his upper body told him he was not yet dead. That death was likely not far off ran through his mind as a near certainty. He could feel nothing however below his waist.

"Jeshua..." He mouthed his teacher's name almost without thought as he awoke. Even as he moved his lips, jaw, and tongue only slightly, a burning pain struck his mouth from the movement.

He felt an immediate response, a comfort and peace which eased the pain and made it more bearable. There were no words in his mind this time, just a presence that he knew was there with him and wouldn't leave. That presence continued to intimate to him that things were about to happen, that the Kingdom of Light was almost there, and that Andrew's suffering was not for nothing. There was a reasoning behind it.

It then came to him that something was different this time. The floor beneath him was not hard and cold like it had been, and the stench of his own waste and blood was gone. The air entering his nostrils was fresh and fragranced with sea salt. He then realized too that his wrists were no longer bound together, and lay at his sides. He tried moving his hands and arms and found them sore but serviceable.

_What?_ He wondered.

Andrew used his arms to slowly try and put himself into a sitting position. As he began to move, painful as it was, he then realized that he was no longer wearing the gray woolen shirt he had come to Draenor with. His chest was not bare however, it was covered with bandages down to his waist that looked like they might have been made from some kind of animal hair and soaked in something that smelled like medicine. His wrists were also wrapped with the bandages where they had born the metal shackles. Those parts of his skin which were exposed were clean as those someone had bathed him.

He then also saw that he had been lain on a bed with a mattress in a chamber he didn't recognize. There were windows set in the walls which were the source of the fresh air and daylight which flowed in. Not far from him, two Draenei, a tall, muscular male in armor carrying a crystalline hammer and an only less tall female he didn't recognize in what looked like they could be clerical robes stood near a door.

_Where am I_? He asked himself.

The Draenei woman then noticed his movement and what he was trying to do. She said something to what he assumed to be the guard, and approached Andrew who was still having difficulty. The guard then disappeared through the door. Without saying anything, she reached out to assist him in propping himself up. She then went to a nearby cabinet which had been set into a wall and retrieved what looked like a lavender colored pillow. She brought it over to him and gently placed it behind his back to provide support.

"Thank you." Andrew told her, his mouth hurting even as he said it.

The Draenei woman—was she a nurse or a physician? Andrew wondered—then went to another cabinet and retrieved a hexagonally shaped transparent bottle of scarlet liquid as well as a small crystalline cup. She poured a small amount of its contents into the cup and then brought it to him, pressing it against his lips for him to drink.

Andrew opened his lips as best he could and the liquid entered. Immediately, the pain and swelling which had consumed his face began to subside substantially and he found he was able to move his mouth and jaw much more easily and freely. His head cleared more as well.

"Thank you again, Ma'am." The fisherman repeated.

The nurse smiled, but again said nothing as she helped him finish the contents of the cup, and then went to return the bottle to its cabinet. She then returned to where she had been standing next to the door, but did not take her eyes off of him at any point.

After several more minutes, the guard returned with another, white haired Draenei woman in golden bronze plate armor set with scarlet and violet crystals whose face Andrew knew very well. That cyan colored face bore the tracks of tears which had recently run down across feminine cheeks. There was a softer, but clearly more troubled expression on that face than he had seen previously. It made her seem younger and more vulnerable to him, almost a different person.

"Leave us." High Exarch Yrel told both the guard and the nurse and they obeyed quickly. The door slid closed behind them, and Andrew was once more alone with his tormenter, though he got this sense this might be a different conversation than the last one.

"The physician tells me there is nothing she can do for your legs. Your back was broken. I am sorry for that. I went too far." Yrel began.

Andrew answered her with a nod, accepting her apology. There was a part of him that didn't want to, that wanted to be angry with her and hate her for what she did to him over the last several days, but he could tell that it was being drowned out by his teacher's continued presence within him. That was okay with him. Jeshua had taught that forgiveness was the key to restoration and healing, and proved it over and over again. He could tell, even as he watched her, that her entire demeanor had changed. Had something happened to her while he was unconscious? He didn't know, but he waited for her to continue.

"The disappearance of the naaru has brought things out in me I..." She began and then stopped, trying to collect her thoughts. "They are dear to me. K'ara in particular is very dear to me. My teacher, the Prophet Velen gave his life to restore her to the Light when she had been darkened. Since then she has been like family. I consider her like family. I lost my older sister Samaara to the Orcs. She had been the only family I had when she died. The Prophet…" paused as if to find the right words, "entered the Light shortly afterwards. K'ara and the others are all I have left. I cannot lose my family again."

Andrew considered these words carefully before he answered. Then something she said struck him as odd. "You said the Prophet Velen? When did you say Velen died?"

A mournful look crossed her face, "Shortly after my sister, during the war years ago."

A look of confusion crossed his face, "I don't know how that's possible. I've met the Prophet Velen. He came to see Jeshua at Hearthglen on Azeroth. He came briefly to see the rest of us in Lordaeron a few weeks ago. He leads the Draenei on my world. Tall, older gentleman with a long white beard and robes. Really nice fellow."

Yrel looked stunned for a moment at his response, the emotions on her face drifting between shock, anger, and even a glimmer of hope. Then her expression changed as if remembering something and became a look of understanding.

She nodded to him and said, "Yes, I remember this. A Paladin from your world told me once of the strange timeline your Azeroth exists in. He told me that in your world, my world died and most of my people with it, perhaps even myself, and those who survived escaped in the Exodar led by the Prophet Velen. I suppose he was trying to comfort me after the Prophet's death that in some way he was not truly dead. I remember that Paladin fondly. He was the commander for your Alliance's forces here during the war. He was a good man, for a human. I don't understand how such things could be, but I came to trust his word so I suppose that is possible."

The thought that this world could exist in a different timeline from his own hadn't actually occurred to Andrew. It made him wonder about what other differences could have happened. But those were thoughts for another time.

"You say this Prophet Velen came to speak with your Jeshua? About what?" Yrel asked him.

"Mostly just to find out if the stories which were running around about him were true." Andrew replied. "Jeshua talked to him for quite a while. Turned out Velen himself needed someone to talk to. The Legion war on my world did a number on him. He had to watch both the naaru he was friends with and his own son die on the same day a few years back. He seemed pretty broken when Jeshua talked to him."

Skeptical, Yrel told him, "The Prophet I knew had no son."

"I don't know all the details, but from what I heard around from another friend later on, somehow his wife and son had been left behind on Argus. The Legion tormented and then turned his son against him. I guess they did that to him ever since your people left. He became a Legion general named Rakeesh. He killed the naaru before the Paladin Highlord and members of the Silver Hand took him down. Velen was there to see the whole thing." Andrew answered.

Yrel stared at Andrew, her expression still skeptical, unsure of whether or not he was telling her the truth. "And you say this Jeshua… comforted him with his grief?"

"They talked about a lot of things, but yeah." Andrew replied honestly. "Velen walked away from Jeshua with the same impression the rest of us did. He took Jeshua's pact the last time he was in Lordaeron with us."

"Why would he do that?" Yrel asked.

"Because everything I told you about Jeshua was the truth." Andrew responded. "Look, High Exarch, I'm just a fisherman. I met Jeshua after my brother came and told me about this crazy cleric he met in the local tavern only to find out the truth was crazier than what I first thought. I honestly don't even think I have the imagination to make up everything I told you about him."

At this, Yrel gave a small grin in spite of herself.

"I honestly don't know what happened to the naaru here." He continued. "If Jeshua had something to do with it, then he had a good reason for it like he did with everything else. The Orc fellow I talked to, Golmash, said something the other day. He said, 'In the Light we are all one.' There's something to that. The way I take it is that those who are in the Light are always here with us because the Light's always here with us, even when it looks dark. If those naaru were in the Light, then they're not gone any more than your Prophet Velen is. As I understand it, Jeshua is the Holy Light with skin on. After what I've seen, that's the only conclusion I can reach. What that means to me is that wherever Jeshua is, so is everyone who is in the Light, and wherever someone in the Light is, so is Jeshua. Those naaru might not be in that crystal fortress I saw up above us, but if they're with Jeshua then they're still in the Light and wherever the Light is, they are. So my guess is that if you want to be with them still somehow, then you've got to go through him. The only thing I've known for certain is that he wanted me to come here and tell you all this about him, and that it was urgent that I do so. He keeps telling me that the Kingdom's almost here. I don't know what that means for this Draenor, this timeline, or whatever this world is. But I do know for certain that if your world is going to survive, it's going to be because of him and not because of anyone or anything else. He wanted us to take his cup and his pact everywhere we went and give it to everyone who would take it. I don't know how much time is left, but I'm here now and willing to do what he said."

Yrel stood silently for a few moments, digesting what the human told her. She studied his face. He thought maybe she was trying to see if he was lying or trying to deceive her, but that wasn't something he did easily. Lying just wasn't a part of who he was.

Finally she said with a tone of defeat in her voice, "I believe you."

And then, without another word, she walked out of the room and did not return, leaving Andrew to his own thoughts. The Draenei physician returned to the room to see to his care, but said nothing and gave no indication she had heard any of their conversation.

At the provincial border between Nagrand and Talador…

Grommash Hellscream stood on the road looking upon the scene before him, breathed deeply, and smiled for the first time in a long time. The grasslands and brown cliffs of his homeland called to him in a way that he had not felt in a long, long time, and in truth he had thought to never see them again, at least not as himself or in his right mind. In the distance, his sharp Orcish ears could make out the lowing of Clefthoofs, and the breeze carried on it the scent of the wild grasses and trees. This was Warsong territory. This was where he belonged. Golmash had kept his word and brought his elder father home.

He and the other Lightbound Orcs stood by as the warchief stood and took it all in. But then a nagging thought took him.

"Are there any of us left to return home to?" Grommash turned to his son and asked him.

"There are many villages of the Warsong clan still near Oshu'gun and the ancestral burial grounds." Golmash told him. "As many of us as would submit to the Light willingly."

"I see. Women and children then, and peon farmers who chose not to fight and defend the ways of our ancestors." Grommash responded, a bitter taste in his mouth. "How quaint."

"Several of my men have gone on ahead to prepare a place for you if you want it. You will be received well. Many still respect and look up to you as their rightful chieftain." The Exarch told him. "Vornek and Goreth will travel with you and explain your presence to Army of Light patrols if need be."

The warchief turned to face him directly, having caught Golmash's implication. "You're not coming with me?"

"I can't." Golmash replied. "I feel that honor compels me to return to Shattrath City and find the human who stayed behind. The council of Exarchs was minded against him before we left. I do not know what his fate will have been. Those men who go with me have all made their choices."

Grommash considered this. He turned to look back towards his homelands and took another breath of its air. It was then that he noticed it was not quite right. There was a slight sour smell to it, like something had died and been left to rot nearby. It reminded him of the stench around the Hellfire Citadel in Tanaan. He looked more closely at the nearby grasses and foliage. They were not as vibrant as he remembered, and the grasses looked to be yellowing and retreating even here as they had done in Gorgrond. Eventually, even rich Nagrand would die like Tanaan and Gorgrond.

"The desiccation has reached even here." the warchief observed.

"It has. It has been slow, but eventually, the poisons from the fel will turn all of Draenor into a wasteland." Golmash confirmed. "We've known this for some time."

"You believe this human could have the answer to changing that? To saving our world?" Grommash asked. "This Jeshua he talked about healed the other world, Azeroth. You believe this power he wields can do the same here?"

"I do. The Light within me pulls me to him." The Exarch told him. "I believe the healing of our world lies with him."

"I know nothing of the Holy Light, Golmash, except what the Draenei have done to us in its name. But if there is any hope for our world, any chance that this human Jeshua could save it as he did his own, then I will fight as _his_ ally and the ally of those who follow _him_ willingly." The warchief told his son as he turned to face him, then he paused and asked, "This human is responsible for your freeing me, is he not?" His voice uncharacteristically contemplative. "Hmph. Honor compels me to return the favor. Perhaps it is not time for this old ghost to put down his war axe just yet."

The Orc Exarch stood there looking at his father in stunned disbelief.

"For blood and honor, my son." Grommash Hellscream held out his left hand for his son.

Golmash Hellscream stepped forward and clasped it with his own returning, "For blood and honor, father."

"There used to be pens for our patrols' riding wargs not far from here. We would make better time on four paws than two feet." the warchief told him.

"It's still there." Golmash confirmed for him, still not fully believing what was happening. "Our people still use it."

"Then we ride to free this human," the warchief answered him, "and hopefully to save our home."


	7. Chapter 7

Resistance – Finale

Embaari Village in Shadowmoon Valley on Draenor…

The red gold light of dawn was just breaking across the landscape to the east when the lone fae dragon alighted in the village. It was still quiet as its armored rider slid down from her saddle, patted the seemingly delicate yet powerful creature's neck somewhat absentmindedly, and then left it there to wait for her as she wandered away from it. The village had not yet fully stirred for the day, though she saw a few of its inhabitants starting to mill about with their early morning chores. The air was still cool and damp with a slight fog that had not yet lifted. The dark azure and green foliage seemed almost a healthy color in the twilight of the morning. She could almost pretend everything was as it had been when she was much younger and still an acolyte at the temple of Karabor both frustrating and amusing her mentor and teacher, the Prophet Velen himself.

Yrel however knew better. This was not the same landscape she had known as a child. And she was not the same person. She had not slept that night, choosing instead to fly all night from Shattrath City directly here to this place. She had not actually slept in many nights. Not since what she learned of the naaru's fate in Tempest Keep, and not since the first reports of the Light refusing to respond to her people's clerics and holy warriors. It was unthinkable, and yet it was happening.

As the light increased over the landscape, the darkness of the night could no longer hide the sickly discoloration around her, the unhealthy paleness of the trees and the too much green of the grasses which betrayed their diseased state. She wanted to ignore it as she walked up the path towards the Draenei shrine just outside of the village, but she couldn't. The poisons of the fel had reached across the sea from Tanaan to even here in what had been in her youth a kind of refuge from her duties and studies as a novice priestess.

She rarely returned to Embaari over the last thirty-six years. There were too many memories. Many… Most were good. But those that weren't continued to haunt her dreams and drive her actions in ways even she did not fully understand. She could not come to this place without seeing _the__m_.

The sun had finally crested by the time she reached the shrine and then stopped. A kind of fear took her, and kept her from going any further. Images and memories flashed through her mind as she looked in one direction and saw the Prophet once more looking at her kindly with a sad but knowing look on his face as he passed his mantle on to her and gave himself fully to the Light to redeem K'ara, the darkened naaru, from the void which had overtaken her. When she looked in another direction she would see her sister Samaara either smiling or frowning at her depending on whether Yrel was doing what she was supposed to be.

"What would you have done?" She whispered with tears in her eyes into the morning light to her long passed teacher. "What would you do now, Prophet?"

She turned from the sight and looked to the east towards the ruins of what had been called the Anguish Fortress by the Orc clans who had made Shadowmoon Valley their home long before the Draenei had settled there. She could not bring herself to travel there and see that hated place again. She could not bear to see the altar where… where her sister was murdered by the thrice damned Orc warlock Ner'zhul once more.

Her people had lost so much at the hands of the Orcs. _She_ had lost so much personally. She had believed that it had been because of an ignorance of the Light's path that they had strayed so far into the darkness which nearly destroyed their world, and almost four decades later still threatened to do so. She struggled to forgive at first, and work with the Orc warchief who had been responsible for all that suffering to rebuild Draenor. She had learned that he himself had been at least somewhat deceived and betrayed. She eventually called him and his people "friends," and the Light seemed to bless that. She really wanted it to be true, and for the Orcs to be able to eventually turn from their savage ways into the Light's path. For a short time even, that dream seemed to be approaching a reality. Maybe her sister and teacher hadn't died for nothing. She had been there when Golmash had completed his trials to become a warrior. The young Orc had always seemed to look up to his "Aunt Yrel" as she had come to think of herself towards him. His interest in the Light had begun at an early age, and she had encouraged it just as her family had encouraged her interest and inclinations towards the priesthood. Like K'ara, Golmash had come to help fill that void within her which Samaara's and Velen's death had left.

But his father and so many others rejected the Light and looked upon its gifts with suspicion. "We will be slaves to no one." he had told her time and time again. They stubbornly clung to their barbaric, bloody, and abhorrent ways. How many times had she seen sickly children, who could have been treated and cared for by Draenei medicines and technology, left to die because they were too "weak" to be accepted by the clan? And what about those few Orc women who had born "half-breeds" like Lantressor, the renowned Blademaster, or Garona, Gul'dan's pet assassin? The fates of those mothers had given her nightmares when she had learned of them. Purity and strength were prized by the Orc clans, and anyone that didn't live up to that standard was cast out or worse.

It had been the Lightmother who had given the instruction to bring all of them into the Light by force if necessary. But Yrel had not needed any convincing by the time the naaru had made it known. She would put an end to the barbarism, infanticide, and needless murders of innocent Orc women who had loved the wrong race. The darkness was to be finally purged from Draenor, and she would be the Light's torch to do it. The naaru never intended to actually harm any of them, only to purge them of the shadow which tainted their culture and hearts.

Why did they resist so hard? Why did they force the Army of the Light to end their lives needlessly? Why did Orcs always insist that warfare and bloodshed was the only way to settle anything? It was this insanity which her people had fought against in the name of the Light. How many of those warriors which she had called friends had she shed tears over because they had refused the Light? How many chose suicide at the hands of Lightforged Warframes rather than just accepting the naaru's gift for what it was? How much Orc blood had they forced on her hands whether she wanted it or not? Durotan and she had fought together against the Iron Horde in Shattrath Harbor. He was another friend who had chosen death over the Light, as did ultimately his mate, Draka.

_Damned crazy Orcs_. She thought to herself bitterly.

She had received word shortly after she had begun interrogating the human that Golmash, along with a dozen other Light gifted Orcs, had taken his father from his cell and left the city with him. She did not know why he might have done that, but if there had been any Orc on this world she felt she might have trusted, it was her protege, Golmash Hellscream. He was an Exarch of the Army of the Light and had rightfully earned that rank among her people. In a year's time they had made no progress on reasoning with the old warchief, perhaps his son might have decided on a different strategy of getting through to him? It was not unreasonable. Though she found it troubling that he had been seen entering and leaving Andrew's lodgings the night before and just before she had come to arrest the human. Golmash had seemed unusually moved by the human's story, but she hadn't been given the chance to speak with him privately about it before he left the city.

There was no longer any threat from Grommash Hellscream that she could see, regardless. The other Exarchs might have been nervous about Golmash's actions. Several expressed their concerns to her, and even sent out patrols to try and find them. But she knew the truth of it even if they couldn't see it yet. The rest of the Orc villages had been purged and subjugated to the Light as had the Ogres. Even if Golmash intended to set him loose upon Draenor once more, he would be a warchief of no one. Just a worn out old soldier with no one to lead into battle. One Orc did not make a new Horde menace.

She lingered a little longer in the spot where her life had been permanently changed, allowing her tears to fall freely now as the human's face came into her mind; battered, bruised, and broken at her very literal hands. She had surprised herself with her own savagery towards the man. His words, his very presence, and what she had seen on the viewscreen in Tempest Keep of the last minutes of the naaru had awakened a rage, a dark and abiding anger in her that she hadn't even realized was there. It was a darkness within herself that she had been blind to up until…

She involuntarily went down on her knees and then into a sitting position on her backside on the road as she struggled with the memory.

Her mind went blank as she tried to process what had happened in that unused storage room she had turned into a torture chamber. Images of her beating the man senseless flashed through her mind and she wanted to force them back out again. They culminated in the savage back kick which had crushed the man's spine rendering him a cripple for the rest of his natural life. It had all been in anger, and pain, and desperation and…

She didn't want to remember it. She didn't want to remember herself doing those horrible things to that man. Certainly it had been someone else, hadn't it? For a brief instant, she felt almost comforted that it might have been before her own mind destroyed that illusion entirely and forced her to confront what Velen had once told her himself, that there was darkness within her. That darkness had become manifest in the torment of a helpless, bound human who had the audacity to tell her what she didn't want to hear even as his own life was hanging by a mere thread.

The physician had confirmed the reality that her own mind had shocked her back to; that she had nearly murdered him in that storage room. Had it been her own mind, or had it been the Light opening her eyes to what she had been blind to? She didn't know, and that ignorance scared her just as much as the knowledge of what she had done, and what she had become in that moment.

She told the human the truth the last time she spoke with him. She did believe him. She had believed him the first time he told her, and that had only made her angrier. She didn't want to believe him. She wanted him to be a liar, and that there had been something more he had been withholding. But it had been completely irrational. She believed he believed what he was saying, and that he was telling her the truth. But that only made him a lunatic. She didn't need him to be a lunatic, she needed him to be a liar. But even as lunatics go, he did not act like one. And what disturbed her more was that there were times she swore she could feel the Light coming from him. This also only served to feed the darkness that lashed out at him.

The sun had fully risen into the sky in the east, clearing the horizon and revealing the sickness the once beautiful landscape held in its entirety. Her world, her home, was dying because of the fel which the Orcs had brought to their world. She had believed that the naaru and the Holy Light held the answer to saving it. She had believed it so strongly that she had led a Lightforged crusade across Draenor to spread the Holy Light across its surface. But the world continued to die, and the naaru were now nowhere to be found. And the only person who offered any kind of an explanation or answer was a crippled, lunatic human whom she had nearly beaten to death.

"Holy Light, what do I do?" She whispered, her tears continuing to flow into greater and greater sobs. "Where do I go from here? Help me, please."

At the southern gate of Shattrath City…

The Draenei guard had just started his watch at the city's gate that afternoon the hour before along with his companion who stood at a distance, but not too far off to his left. He sat atop a war elekk which wore golden white reinforced barding armor. There had been a time only a few days before when he thought the guard duty was a pointless exercise. There appeared to be no one left to threaten the Army of the Light on Draenor. The Legion had been utterly defeated decades ago, and the resistant Orcs had all either been brought into the Light or put down. There was even an Orc on the Council of Exarchs! Even the Ogre clans had miraculously seen reason and submitted.

But then he and all of Shattrath City's guards had been put on alert by Exarchs Maladaar and Akama. A group of Lightbound Orcs led by Exarch Hellscream had freed the former warchief of the Iron Horde four days before without authorization by the Council and without explanation, and had set the whole city on edge. Orc warriors, Priests, and Paladins in the city, some of whom he had known and fought alongside personally, had been questioned and then confined to their living quarters for the time being under the Council's orders. The very idea that even one of those who had been blessed by the naaru could suddenly turn against them, and an Exarch at that… It was a terrifying thought and had shaken his own faith in the celestial beings. He remembered the war with the Iron Horde well. Unrestrained Orcs were nothing if not bloodthirsty savages just waiting to run towards the darkness instead of the Light.

He and his companion had been instructed to be alert for any Orcs, Lightbound or otherwise who might approach the gates and hold them there, especially Exarch Hellscream. He was wanted for questioning by the rest of the Council. Just a few days ago, he might have occasionally tried playing a solitary game to pass the time on watch. Not today. Today, his eyes scanned the road, the hills, and the surrounding woods continuously. As he did, memories of the Iron Horde's depravities ran through his mind involuntarily.

His first hour of watch had been uneventful in spite of the high alert he was on. There had been nothing to report to anyone. The only travelers to come to and from the city had been the patrols earlier in the day, but neither Orc nor Draenei had passed through the gate since he had begun his watch.

He continued to scan the road until he thought he saw motion in the woods about a hundred yards off to his right. The cover of the trees was thick in that direction, and the wildlife was plentiful. It could have been nothing, but he wanted to be sure.

And then a single, massive, silver and white riding warg bearing an equally massive, heavily muscled brown skinned Orc wearing the Light forged armor of an Exarch stepped out of the woods and onto the road. The Orc's weapon, the hammer of a Paladin, was still secured to his back. Like the other Lightbound, the Orc's eyes blazed with the Holy Light. The Exarch did not appear as though he was expecting any trouble, and the guard felt no immediate threat from him.

_Perhaps there was some misunderstanding?_ The Draenei questioned internally, but still, he had his orders.

"Exarch Hellscream! Hold where you are!" The guard called out as the Orc approached within earshot. He and his companion guard moved their huge mounts directly in front of the gate, blocking entry.

The Exarch brought his warg calmly to a stop in front of the guards and asked patiently, "What is the problem, justicar?"

"We've been given orders by the Council to detain you here and inform them of your return to the city, Exarch." The guard responded.

"I see." the Orc replied nonchalantly. "Perhaps then you should inform them also of my other companions, and explain to them that our business is quite urgent and cannot wait."

"Your other companions?" The guard asked, confused. He saw no one else with the Exarch. "I don't see-"

Another Orc on warg-back came out of the woods. His long silver hair was tied back into a warrior's tail, and the scars on his muscled frame told of his survival of many battles. This Orc too was followed by another, and then two more, and then it seemed a never ending stream of Orcs flowed out of the woods, some on the backs of riding wargs, and some on foot, but all of them armed with axes, warhammers, swords, rifles, and other weapons. Most had the light forged tattoos of the Lightbound, their eyes also filled and shining with the Light.

"I believe you were going to inform them we were here, and then let us pass." Exarch Hellscream told him, a casual, even friendly smile on his face. "My people can get quite irritated when they are kept waiting."

"I… I can't! The Council…!" The guard began to protest. His companion off to the side spoke into a pink colored crystal set into his gauntlet, urgently informing those inside the city of the developing situation.

"Yes, I will certainly tell them of your due diligence." The Orc answered him politely. "Now please, before things get out of hand, I would appreciate it if you and your companion would move your elekks to the side so we may pass. I would hate to have to make it an order you would then regret disobeying, justicar."

The Draenei soldier looked from the Exarch to the host of heavily armed Lightbound behind him with more continuing to file out of the woods. None had unsheathed their weapons yet, though the older one had a feral look in his eye as though he were just waiting for an excuse to use the huge war axe strapped to his back. He then looked to his companion who was seeing the same thing he was.

Finally, his good sense caught up with him. "Of- of course not, Exarch." He managed to say before he moved his mount to the side, and his fellow guard followed suit.

"Thank you, friend." Exarch Hellscream told him, and then entered the city without further challenge followed by over a hundred Lightbound Orcs.

Inside Shattrath City…

Golmash had been careful not to show it, but he had been relieved when the guards had finally moved away from the gates. He knew it might be an empty hope, but his desire was to accomplish this without bloodshed if at all possible. But the incident had told him much about what might have happened within the city within the last four days. It seemed the rank and trust which he had rightfully earned among the Army of the Light counted for nothing among the other, _Draenei_ Exarchs when he did things they didn't understand or sanction, regardless of their supposedly equal positions. It both saddened and angered him that even after all these years of working together for the cause of the Light, the Draenei still harbored their prejudices and fears about his people and that it did not take much for those prejudices to take precedence over their mutual brotherhood in the Light.

_In the Light, we are all one._ He thought to himself again. They were words he believed in. He believed that all were of equal value in the Holy Light. It shamed the Light, he felt, that the Draenei obviously did not see it that way.

Vornek and Goreth had indeed gone ahead into the remaining Orc villages and outposts of Nagrand to prepare for the former warchief's coming and resettlement. What Golmash had not fully anticipated, especially among the Lightbound, was how strong the Warsong clan's loyalty to their chieftain still ran. When they were informed of Grommash Hellscream's return, warrior after warrior, eyes blazing with the Light, rode out to form an honor guard of sorts for their chieftain to see him home safe and unmolested. For them, it was the right and honorable thing to do. Those warriors met the two Hellscreams on the road to the warg pens and discovered the new plan. They too felt honor bound to assist him and their Exarch in the recovery of the human seen as responsible for their chieftain's release. In all, nearly ten dozen Lightbound warriors responded to what they believed was the Holy Light's call upon them to act.

His father, Grommash Hellscream, rode a massive black warg at his side as they passed through the gates and into the outer sections of the city. To the alarm of many of the ordinary Draenei citizens, young and old alike, the parade of heavily armed Orcs passed over bridges, through gardens, and across courtyards surrounded by contemplative pools of which Shattrath at times seemed to have no end. The Draenei loved their manicured gardens. He could admit a certain prettiness to them, though Golmash still much preferred the wild beauty of Nagrand's open plains and what had been Gorgrond's thick brush and jungle. He was an Orc, and as much as he had tried to understand and blend in with the Draenei, that fact would never change.

They rode forward towards the great lift that would take them high up into the residential neighborhood where he last saw the human, Andrew. Golmash allowed for the possibility that he might have been wrong, and the human might not have been mistreated at the hands of those who saw him as a threat. He allowed for the possibility that he might have misunderstood their reactions, especially those of the High Exarch, Yrel. He would give them that chance. He allowed for those possibilities, but he did not hope for them.

The parade of Orcs made it as far as the bridge to the central dome of the city when they were met with a large force of elekks and warframes which quickly surrounded them. From what Golmash could see, it looked as if every able bodied Draenei warrior in the city had been armed and called out to meet them. At the other end of the bridge, in front of the entry to the dome, Exarch Akama waited on the back of an elekk. His twin golden war scythes remained sheathed for the moment as he held the reins of his war mount.

"Golmash Hellscream!" Akama shouted from across the bridge. "You will stand down immediately and submit for questioning!"

Golmash studied Akama briefly, not missing Akama's use of his name and not his title. There was something off about him. As his eyes scanned the Draenei forces, there appeared to be something not quite right about all of them. They seemed… dimmer. Darker. Their armor and weapons which should have been infused with the Holy Light, and the warframes which even relied on the Light magics to function, had lost their brilliance. It was as if the Light had retreated from them. Briefly looking at his own warriors, he saw no such retreat of the Light among them.

"And why is that, Akama? We are all one in the Light are we not? You, myself, these warriors. Are we not all brothers and equal under the Holy Light?" Golmash replied.

"That remains to be seen." Akama replied. "You released this Orc," he pointed at the former warchief, "a man responsible for the near genocide of the Draenei people, without authorization from the Council. You lead a small _horde_ of armed Orc warriors into the city with this same Orc at your side. Why? For what purpose?"

"Do the warriors of the Army of the Light need a reason to enter its capital city, Akama? Or are only Draenei allowed to come and go as they please?" Golmash rebutted him. "I released my father under my own authority as Exarch of the Lightbound Orcs. They are my responsibility and jurisdiction just as much as the vindicators are yours. I would not tell you what you can and cannot do with your charges, Akama. Do not presume to tell me what I must do with mine. Outside of the naaru, the only Exarch with that authority is Yrel, and I do not see her among those here."

"The High Exarch is elsewhere on her own business. A messenger was dispatched to inform her of this..." Akama nearly spat the word, "_invasion_."

"Speaking of my people, I see none of the Orcs I left stationed here among your guards or even among those citizens wandering the city. Why is that, Akama?" Exarch Hellscream pressed. "There should have been three full contingents of Lightbound Mag'har. Three hundred Orc warriors, not to mention their families. I saw to the duty rosters myself a week ago. There should have been Orcs manning the southern gate today. Where are they?"

Around and behind him, the Lightbound Orcs who had followed him to Shattrath began to look around and murmur to one another at the Exarch's exchange. They too had noticed that there were none of their people visible in the city since they had entered. They should have seen brown skinned passersby and guards among the blue. It disturbed many of them greatly.

Akama's face grew uncomfortable at the question, but instead of answering it, he hardened himself and repeated his demand, "Stand down your warriors, Hellscream, and submit to questioning!"

But Golmash's anger had risen within him when the reality of the situation struck him. He hadn't anticipated that the Draenei would turn on _all_ of the other Orcs in the city because of his release of his father. He knew that he and those with him might be called to answer. He had been prepared for that. But where had his people gone? Where had their women and children would would normally be in the marketplace gone? What had Akama and the other Exarchs ordered done with them?

"No!" Golmash responded. "Not until I know what you have done with my people!"

Next to him, Grommash Hellscream unstrapped his war axe, Gorehowl from his back and held it loosely in his right hand. Around him, he heard from his warriors the unsheathing swords, the unstrapping of axes, and the cocking of rifles. This was not how he had wanted this to go, but as much as he wanted there to be peace, it would not come at the sacrifice of innocent men, women, and children.

"I am giving you one last chance, Hellscream!" Akama threatened.

But even as he said it, Golmash could see the fear in the Draenei man's eyes. There was something wrong with them. Akama had been hoping that the Orc Exarch would just roll over and obey. He feared a confrontation, and that made little sense to the Orc. His Lightbound warriors were easily outnumbered, and may just as easily be decimated by the warframes as by the elekks and guards.

_Holy Light, give me strength and wisdom._ He prayed internally. _Be my shield as well as my hammer to defend the innocent and bring your justice and mercy on those who would molest them._

"My ally is the Holy Light, Akama!" Golmash announced loudly to everyone in his deep, booming Orc voice. "The Holy Light is my refuge, my shield, and my strength! The Holy Light will judge between you and I!"

As he was speaking, his own eyes began to glow and then blaze a white gold Light, and a sheath of Holy Light surrounded him as he sat astride his warg. Golmash then dismounted and stood with his boots on the bridge, unstrapping his own warhammer from his back and approaching the center of the bridge. As he walked, wherever his boots touched, Light spread like ripples in a pond outward until everywhere he had walked was bathed in golden, white Holy Light.

Gasps of shock and dismay filled the air around the Draenei, and Akama's eyes went wide at the sight.

"The Light protects the Orc!" One Draenei called out. "The Holy Light has chosen the Orcs over us!" Another cried out in a panic.

_What? Why would that…?_ Golmash was confused for a brief moment until the truth of the matter hit him. The demeanor and appearance of the Draenei warriors made sense just at that moment as he realized, _The Holy Light has stopped answering them!_

"I came hoping for peace, Akama, but prepared for battle if it came to that! Know that if I must fight, then the Light is with me and all those who came with me! This is ridiculous, Akama! We are all brothers in the Light! Are you really going to shame the Holy Light by forcing brother to fight against brother?! And for what?!" Golmash challenged him once more. "The choice is yours!" He told him, and then walked back boldly to his mount, head high and regal. He returned to his saddle, and waited. Looking across the bridge into Akama's eyes, the Draenei Exarch appeared confused, frustrated, and more dangerously, terrified.

_The Light's will be done this day, no matter what that may be._ Golmash thought to himself as he tightened his grip on his hammer.

Elsewhere in Shattrath City…

Andrew heard the shouting outside from the guarded room where he was still recovering, and wondered what was happening outside. It was the first time he had heard such a commotion since coming there.

The Draenei bandages and medicines had done their job well over the last day. The wounds, bruising, and fractures which he had endured at the hands of the High Exarch had nearly healed completely. All of his injuries, that is, save one. He still couldn't feel or move his legs. The pain in his back had subsided for the most part, but the damage to his spine wasn't even beginning to mend.

The High Exarch had not returned to speak with him since the day before, and his only companion in the room at any point was the nurse who attended to his physical needs. She came and went throughout the day and night to check on him. There was also the guard standing outside the chamber, but he never entered the room.

There always seemed to be a shy smile on the Draenei nurse's lips, and her eyes were kind, though she spoke very little to him. Andrew had thought, for a Draenei, she seemed kind of pretty in an exotic sort of way. She had pale blue skin and short horns like a goat which peaked out of shoulder length, jet black hair. She wore a sleeveless white top with light blue fringe which exposed the abdominal muscles of her stomach. A matching skirt inset with sapphire crystals draped around her hips down to her ankles, leaving her hooves exposed. He had tried to engage her in conversation, but her answers were short, and she offered nothing in the way of chatting on her own. She did however help him to eat, sit up, change his bandages when they had needed to be that morning, and use a bed pan to relieve himself without making a mess. The most personal information he had managed to get out of her however was her name, _Uuna_.

That afternoon, Uuna heard the shouting too, and at first a look of confusion then a look of deep concern if not outright fear spread over her attractive Draenei features as her eyes went to the windows of his chamber. Andrew couldn't hear exactly what was being said, but the nurse's expression changed so quickly, he was certain she could.

"What's happening out there, Uuna?" He asked her. "It sounds like quite a ruckus."

She looked from the windows to him and back to the windows before she responded to him, fear increasingly ringing his voice, "There's something going on between the Orcs and my people! Exarch Hellscream and a large host of Lightbound have entered the city armed and are challenging Exarch Akama and his vidicators! I don't understand what's happening! It sounds like blood's about to be spilled! In this city!"

_Go there! Before it's too late!_ The voice of Jeshua rang in Andrew's mind clear and strong.

"I need to get out there." Andrew then told her as he tried to move from his bed.

"What?!" She exclaimed back at him. "Why would you…? No, stop! You'll hurt yourself even further!"

Andrew had used his torso to swing his unresponsive legs over the side of the bed. In truth, he didn't know how this was going to work. He just knew that if Jeshua wanted him out there that badly, then he needed to go. Now. He used his arms to push himself off of the bed, and landed his hind quarters on the hard polished stone like floor of the chamber. He felt nothing as he did so except hard pressure coming up through his stomach.

Uuna rushed towards him to pick him up and put him back into the bed. He felt like a child's doll as she lifted him from under his arms with relative ease. "Your legs are gone, Andrew Haleis," she told him using his full name which he had given her, "you can't go anywhere on your own, and the High Exarch made it clear that you can't leave this room!" The nurse told him as she set him gently back on the mattress of his bed.

Andrew then felt something familiar, the presence of his teacher and friend, envelope him completely. He did not fight it, but surrendered to that presence willingly, understanding that whatever Jeshua did, there was a good reason for it.

Andrew looked the nurse straight in the eyes. He knew it was his movements, and he knew even that it was his voice and his lips speaking, but he felt as a spectator cooperating with another's will and mind.

"Uuna," he began to speak to her. As he did, the nurse stepped backwards in surprise, though he wasn't aware what should have shocked her, "Good men and women, both Orcs and Draenei, are going to die today if I don't get out there. You're right. My legs are useless, but yours are working just fine. I'm asking you, in the name of the Holy Light, to be my legs and carry me out to what's happening so I can stop it."

Shock had gripped her features as she looked at the crippled human fisherman. "Your- your eyes!" She stammered in awe. "The Holy Light fills them!"

"Please, Uuna. Take me to them." Andrew's voice told her.

The shouting outside had grown quiet for a few moments, and then they both heard the clashing of weapons ringing through the windows, and the war cries of both Orc and Draenei combined. Tears formed in Uuna's eyes at the sound and she nodded at the human as she approached him, turned around and knelt down saying, "Wrap your arms around my shoulders, I will hold your legs and carry you on my back. I don't know how we will get past Vindicator Aaral at the door, but..."

"I will talk to him." Andrew's voice responded. Andrew himself just continued to watch and listen as his teacher worked through his own broken form. He had thought nothing would surprise him after walking with Jeshua through Lordaeron and seeing what he did then. He was being proven wrong with every moment.

In Shattrath City before the Great Dome…

Akama had not listened. He saw what everyone else had seen, but his mind refused to accept it. He had given the order to his vindicators to bring down the small host of Lightbound Orcs and the Exarch who led them. Not all of his men obeyed. Many of those who had surrounded the Orcs refused the order to attack, not wanting to be found fighting against the Holy Light itself. But for as many refused the Draenei Exarch's command and stood down, just as many followed through and charged.

Akama himself charged his Orc peer on the back of his elekk.

With a heavy heart at Akama's stubbornness, Golmash raised his own warhammer high and cried out, "For the Light!" And his riding warg leaped to meet the massive armored war steed in battle.

The Lightbound took up the war cry and themselves engaged their former Draenei brothers. Around them, sheathes of Holy Light enveloped the Orcs, and Light flowed through their weapons to smash against Draenei hammers, swords, and shields stunning them and driving them back. Orc rifles fired on their blue skinned attackers, driving round after round through plate, mail, and chain armor.

Golmash charged the war elekk on his warg, hammer held high waiting for just the right moment. It happened in a matter of seconds as the Draenei Exarch looked as though he intended to kill the Orc and his mount by stomping on him with the massive animal. But Golmash knew where the weak points of an elekk were in battle. Timing it perfectly, he swerved his own, faster and more agile animal to the left, out of the elekk's path, and then brought his hammer hard against the animal's unarmored front right knee with as much strength as he could muster. He was rewarded with a sickening "_crack_" and Akama's elekk pitched forward, carried by its own mass and momentum. Akama himself went forward over the animal's head and landed hard on the bridge in front of his mount which was crying out for the pain.

His own immediate opponent down, he took a moment to see what fresh hell of battle had been unleashed and, in spite of his Orc's warrior heritage, his heart grieved to see it even as his warhammer came down against a vindicator who sought to avenge his Exarch's downfall. The Draenei fell as the hammer came down on his head and did not get back up as sapphire colored fluid seeped from under his helmet. Blood, both the sapphire color which flowed through Draenei veins and the nearly black red of the Orcs, flowed quickly over the gray white streets and into the previously calm contemplative pools. He saw flashes of Light everywhere in the battle to heal and defend, but only where his own people were concerned.

It was as Golmash had suspected. Those attacking his people were doing it with the strength of their weapons and their own skills as warriors, but the Draenei weren't using the Light to either defend themselves or bring the Orcs to heel. The warframes which had been brought in to intimidate them either did not or could not use their Light based energy weapons, and those piloting them resorted to trying to use the constructs' arms and appendages to beat against the Orcs.

Another Draenei attempted to engage the Exarch and Golmash's hammer came to meet the breastplate of his armor so hard that the sapphire skinned warrior went flying in the opposite direction across the bridge and into the now bloodied pool. He looked briefly to see his aged father, Grommash Hellscream, bring down Gorehowl again and again on Draenei guards like a berserker, the rage of battle quickly taking him. Everywhere Gorehowl swung, more blood flowed and another blue skinned warrior fell. But the Draenei were not the only casualties in that fight, and there were heavily muscled brown skinned bodies among those who lay on the ground without moving.

This fight needed to end, and quickly, before more were lost on either side.

Golmash turned his warg back to where Akama had fallen to see the Exarch getting up. The cries of the fallen elekk rent the air adding to the cries and screams of those wounded and dying. He urged his warg towards the Exarch, running quickly towards him as the Draenei drew his twin golden scythes to meet the Orc in combat.

But Golmash brought his warg up short and shouted at him, hammer in hand, "IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED, YOU OLD FOOL?! ORCS AND DRAENEI KILLING EACH OTHER?! BLOOD RUNNING THROUGH THE STREETS?! HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING?! TELL YOUR MEN TO STAND DOWN BEFORE EVERYONE DIES TODAY!"

"YOU MINDLESS SAVAGES BROUGHT THIS ON US!" Akama bellowed back. "HOW DARE YOU CLAIM THE LIGHT, YOU BEASTS!" And then the Draenei Exarch charged Golmash, Scythes out for the kill.

Golmash countered with the metal handle of his hammer, parrying the attacks of the vindicator's Exarch blow for blow, though a few got through and drew lines of blood across the Orc's unprotected chest.

"Damn you, Akama! I don't want to fight you!" Golmash yelled at him, still focusing on blocking the warrior's slashes from reaching him.

"Then you shouldn't have come back, Hellscream!" Akama yelled back. "You savages have defiled this world long enough!"

"Don't make me kill you, brother!" Exarch Hellscream warned him. He had not yet swung his hammer at the Exarch. He knew what would happen if he did. It was not Orgrim's Doomhammer, but it would still be the last thing Akama would see in this life.

"You Orc filth are no brothers of mine!" Akama retorted, increasing the speed of his attacks.

Around them, the sounds of battle raged on, and the stench of blood and death was everywhere. Golmash felt powerless at the choices he was being given, and even as he parried two more of Akama's attacks, he cried out to the Light, "Holy Light, help me stop this madness!"

Akama continued his attacks, forcing Golmash to give ground to avoid them without killing him. If he was going to do anything to end Akama's insanity himself it would have to be soon.

"STOP! NOW! ALL OF YOU!" an alien, human voice cried out from somewhere close by, his voice choked with emotion.

Golmash heard it loud and clear, but more than that, he felt it deep inside himself, relaxing his fingers to release his hammer. Before he realized it, he heard his warhammer hit the stone of the bridge, and then heard Akama's scythes do the same as the Draenei Exarch's arms fell to their sides as if stunned. His own limbs went slack as well, and the sounds of battle ceased as weapons began to hit the ground all over the city, their owners surprised and stunned where they were. He recognized the effects of the Paladin's war prayer immediately, but this was immeasurably more powerful, and the force of it was irresistible. It was called,_ The Hammer of Justice_, but he had never seen it deployed on this scale before among so many combatants.

Nevertheless, Golmash recognized the voice of the human he had spoken with only days ago. Dazed, he struggled to see from where the human's voice originated. Finally, his eyes fell upon the strangest sight he had ever seen. A half naked human wearing little more but sea scorpion venom soaked bandages on his torso was riding piggyback on a Draenei female wearing the garb of a physician. It would have been comical if both rider and "mount" did not have such distraught, horrified looks on their faces as they viewed the carnage across the city. What was more, the human's eyes were blazing with the sacred Light as though they were twin, white gold suns. Turning his own gaze briefly back to Akama he saw the Draenei Exarch's eyes gone wide, his expression bewildered and in shock at the sight as well.

All went dead silent in the city at the appearance of the Light filled human riding the Draenei female. He said something to the woman who carried him which Golmash could not hear, and she then let go of his legs which then dangled beneath him as if he was unable to use them.

_What has happened to you, human?_ Golmash wondered at the sight. He then wondered, _What have you done to us?_ His own arms and legs still felt sluggish, and he was still unable to do more than move his head and eyes to see what was happening. He could see those others around him who had been fighting were still struggling as well. He had never known the effects of the _Hammer of Justice_ to last as long as it was.

The Draenei woman knelt down and the human carefully slid from her back onto the pavement as all those nearby watched. She then backed away from him, as though she did not know what was to happen next, and feared it.

The human propped his torso up into a half sitting position with one hand. He then cried out, "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HOLY LIGHT IS?! WHAT IT WANTS?! THE LIGHT IS HEALING, CREATION, AND LIFE ITSELF! IT DIDN'T CHOOSE TO TAKE ON MORTAL FLESH TO DESTROY, BUT TO SAVE! IT DIDN'T SEND ME TO BRING JUDGMENT DESTRUCTION, BUT TO BRING LIFE!"

And then the human slapped his free hand's palm down on the stone pavement of the city and cried out one more time, "IN THE NAME OF JESHUA LIGHTBORN, RISE!"

The next thing Golmash knew he though a sun had exploded in the middle of the city for the brightness of the Light which burst outwards from the human. Holy Light raced from where the human touched the ground and quickly enveloped everyone and everything in its path, and with its presence, wave upn wave of peace, joy, and boundless _Life_. Orcs did not weep, but for the first time in his life, as he fell to his knees for what he experienced, tears came to Golmash's eyes for the sight that he saw.

The blood which had run in the streets and in the pools burned off and vanished as though erased by the Light. Golmash's own wounds from Akama's scythes closed without scars, and the same was true on all those around him. Even Akama's elekk which Golmash had crippled was able to stand from where it had fallen as though the blow had never happened. And those warriors whom Golmash had seen killed, whom he knew were dead, Orc and Draenei alike, started to move, their mortal wounds closed and healed as though they never happened. The warrior who had dropped from his own fatal hammer blow began to stir, and then rose from where he had lain dead on the ground, confused and uncertain of what was happening, but alive. This was the raw, pure, healing power of creation unleashed for all to bear witness to.

"THE HOLY LIGHT DEFENDS ITS OWN!" The human cried out again. "YOU ARE ALL ITS CHILDREN, AND BROTHERS ONE TO ANOTHER! THERE WILL BE NO MORE CONFLICT! IN THE LIGHT, WE ARE ALL ONE!"

As Golmash took in the awesome, holy sight before him he realized that he had not been the only one driven to his knees by it. Akama too, knelt on both knees, head bowed in submission as though thoroughly chastised. His war scythes lay where they had fallen and the expression on his face betrayed no desire to retrieve them.

Not far from where Exarch Hellscream knelt on his knees, he saw his gray and white haired father somehow still on his feet. Gorehowl lay on the ground as every other weapon. The expression on Grommash Hellscream's face was one first of anger at being so easily stunned and disarmed. But that had happened to everyone Golmash could see, and it looked as though Grommash could see it too. He could cause no further harm any more than those around him. But the Light had not forced him to his knees, Golmash could see, and the younger Hellscream understood then that it would not force his father to submit to it. It left the choice to him.

As the Holy Light blazed around them, binding wounds, healing, bringing peace, and raising the dead, Golmash watched his father's response to it. This, Golmash knew, was the true presence of the Holy Light as he had known it, something which the elder Hellscream had never experienced before in his life. The rage on the warchief's face calmed and eased to something which looked to be understanding as the Light surrounded him gently. Grommash Hellscream's expression relaxed as he seemed to be considering something, a possibility or possibilities which he had never considered before. Then the old warrior nodded thoughtfully, as if in acknowledgment of an understanding that had passed between him and someone else. Then he brought his fist to his chest in a salute of respect, and did something which Golmash Hellscream had never seen his father do in his entire life. The aged Orc knelt as though in submission. In that moment, Golmash understood that Grommash Hellscream, a warrior who had never surrendered to anyone in his entire life, had surrendered to the Holy Light itself willingly.

And then a voice went through the Orc Exarch's mind before the Light retreated back, leaving the city free of any evidence there had been any fighting at all, _I heard your prayers, child. I don't abandon my own._

Two days later in Shadowmoon Valley…

Yrel had not returned to Shattrath City. She knew she must eventually, but she was not ready. After her brief visit to Embaari Village, she traveled to the great temple of Karabor on the eastern coastline which had once been her home. She had, at the time, only wanted to pay her respects at the memorial of her mentor and teacher, the Prophet Velen, and then sit by the seaside and listen to the waves as she once did when an acolyte there.

But the waves and the sounds of the surf and the sea did not soothe her as they once had. The images of the things she had done to the human ran through her mind again and again, accusing her and exposing the darkness within her; the darkness which Velen had warned her about. Soon, other images began to join them. Images of Orcs murdered for not wanting to become slaves. Images of Durotan and his mate Draka as they died haunted her dreams at night until she could not sleep. Images of the naaru disappearing and abandoning her. Images of the Holy Light itself receding from her and refusing to respond to her call. Images of a human man who she had never met with strawberry colored hair tied back in a ponytail and beard with sea green eyes. A look of grief and sadness was etched into his features as he looked at her.

The High Exarch feared she was going mad from all the images that rushed through her mind. Nothing helped as she attempted to meditate, sit by the sea, spend time in Karabor's gardens. Nothing would stop their flow.

And then the images of her sister began. Samaara came to her in a dream, a nightmare where she was forced to watch her sister die all over again on the altar of the Shadowmoon clan's now abandoned Anguish Fortress. She woke from that dream in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, sobbing.

Unable to go back to sleep, she took a fae dragon from the temple's stables and flew to the one place she had no desire to return to in thirty six years. The hated, cursed place where her sister died.

As the dawn began to break over Shadowmoon Valley, Yrel's mount flew over the stone walls of the abandoned Orc burial grounds. It had been defiled by Ner'zhul and his followers during the war. The Orcs had desecrated their own sacred ancestral grounds with foul magics. Afterwards, those ancestral spirits had become so angry that the surviving Shadowmoon who had abandoned Ner'zhul for their own traditional ways did not dare set foot in its grounds again lest they join them there permanently.

She did not need to walk the grounds of the Orc tombs. She did not know why she needed to see the altar again at all. She only knew that she would find no peace until she did.

Spying the circular stone slab from the air, the fae dragon dropped from the sky and alighted next to it. Yrel then slid off of its back and approached the dark gray stone. It was a hated place for her. Some skeletal remains of her people still littered the ground around the base, testifying to the atrocities which had happened there decades before. But the remains which had last lain on the altar had been removed and entombed in Embaari Village's own cemetary. She had ordered it done herself.

She approached the dark gray slab of stone and hesitatingly put her hand on it. As she did, her sister's last words to her flew through her mind as though she was hearing them again.

"_Yrel, do not be sad. I did not choose this fate, but you… you can still choose. Be strong little one. I… I will be watching over you."_

Fresh tears came to Yrel's eyes as she remembered her sister. "I miss you, Samaara." She whispered as she wept. "I miss you so much. I wish you were here, now."

A deep, familiar voice spoke from behind her, "She is, Yrel. As long as the Light is with us, all those who have died in the Light will be with us."

Surprised at the intrusion, Yrel stood up and turned around quickly to see the last person she would have expected to be there. A second fae dragon stood near the mount she had brought there as the Exarch of the Lightbound Orcs stood not far from her.

"What are you doing here? How did you find me?" She asked in confusion, feeling uncomfortable and vulnerable at his presence.

"I came to find you at the temple only to hear that you had left before dawn. The stable master said you had traveled dead west, and you were clearly upset. I remembered what you had told me of your sister and how she died." Golmash told her.

"They're all gone."Yrel then told him, tears still streaming down her face. "Velen, Samaara, K'ara, my parents. They're all gone. I'm all alone. I have no family now. I have no one. Even the Light has fled from me. It feels like the shadows are all around me and I don't know how to escape this darkness."

Golmash's expression turned to one of compassion as he responded, "I am here, Yrel. You were always there for me. We were always family one to each other, weren't we? I would be there for you, if you would let me."

Yrel said nothing in response to the hulking Orc, but acknowledged his words with a brief nod. They had been true enough since Golmash's youth. It had been a unique relationship they had formed, but there was no denying her somewhat maternal affection for him, being an ear for him when his relationship with his own mother soured, and his father was away seeing to the needs of the clans under his rule as warchief.

Golmash let his gaze wander over the altar and the ruins around them, falling to the remnants of Draenei bone which still littered the ground. "Samaara's death, their deaths," he gestured to those remains, "they were an atrocity which should never have been. Even my father said he never should have pushed Ner'zhul to that point. He never should have trusted his death magics. He told me himself, years ago before the naaru came, he thought himself a fool for doing it. He regretted much during that war, more than you know." He then approached her to stand alongside her, next to the altar, casting his own gaze upon the cold gray stone. "Ner'zhul _was_ a fool. He thought death and the dark powers were the strongest forces in the universe. But there is no darkness so deep that the Holy Light cannot penetrate it. There is no death which the Holy Light cannot undo and make alive again. Ner'zhul did not understand this."

He then turned his gaze to look her directly in the eyes and said, "But we do."

It was then that Yrel looked into his small Orcish eyes and gasped, "Your eyes, they're filled with Light! I don't understand. The Light abandoned us days ago! It wouldn't respond to our prayers!"

"The Light abandons no one, especially not its own." Golmash replied. "The human, Andrew, _enlightened_ us as to the problem." He told her, an ironic smile on his lips which she didn't understand. "Your people rejected Andrew's account of Jeshua when he first told his story, and by doing so Jeshua himself, yes?"

She nodded slowly in acknowledgment.

"Yrel, Jeshua himself is the Holy Light." The Orc's words shocked her as he spoke them, but he continued regardless. "What I have seen, what I have experienced because of these humans in Jeshua's name, I cannot come to any other conclusion. It is a truth which the Light itself informs me of. When you rejected Jeshua and his Emissary, you turned your back on the Holy Light. You brought this darkness upon yourself by refusing to listen to the Light when it spoke to you because you wanted the truth to be something else. You called the Light a liar when it spoke to you."

"I… I didn't…" She wanted to protest, to tell him he was wrong, he was blaspheming, he was speaking nonsense… But she found she couldn't as she looked hard into his Light filled eyes. The evidence of his truth was right there in front of her. The Light was with him even as the darkness sought to consume her.

"My friend, let me guide you back out of the darkness as you once helped me to seek the Light." He told her, placing his huge gauntleted hand on her much smaller shoulder in a way that spoke of affection and concern for her.

As his own hand made contact with her, she felt a calming peace flow from it and into her soul which drank it in like a man dying of thirst drinks in pure, clean water. "Let me show you what the Light showed me because of Jeshua."

New images began flashing through her mind, drowning out and replacing those which had tormented her until she was caught up in a vision, being transported away from the Anguish Fortress. Suddenly she found herself in a verdant, blue green field which she both at once recognized and yet didn't. It looked similar to the fields north of Embaari Village, but there were no Draenei built structures anywhere. The sky above was golden white, and it seemed like broad daylight with no shadows, but there was no sun in the sky. Around her she was surrounded by a huge crowd of people, both Orcs and Draenei together. Some she recognized, others she didn't. And then she saw her sister, Samaara, and standing next to her, smiling was the Prophet Velen. They were smiling and beckoning her to them. Next to her was a human man wearing bright white robes. It was the same man she had seen in her mind before with the strawberry blond hair and beard, and the sea green eyes.

"I am coming." he told her in the vision.

"Who are you?" She asked.

"You know who I am, Yrel." He responded. "I am coming to heal and repair what was split with this world. Prejudice, anger, and hatred divided this world into two paths. One exists in the Twisting Nether as mere fragments, the other is dying from a poison in its very soul. Both are in pain and cry out to me. I will make them whole again. I will make them one, and there will be no more darkness in this world, or any other. Will you join us here when it is finished?"

He gestured with his right hand towards Samaara and Velen. And then Yrel looked past them to a group of Mag'har whom she recognized very well. The chieftain of the Frostwolf clan and his mate, as well as others whom she thought dead. As she followed the line of his arm towards them with her eyes, she saw what looked to be a vicious gaping hole in his wrist and then remembered the human, Andrew's story about his teacher.

"They died. I saw them die." Yrel told him, confused even as everything within her told her he was speaking the truth.

"Death has no hold I cannot break, daughter." Jeshua responded to her. "In me, all are one, and all within me will never taste death again. I promise you."

Yrel felt uncertain and vulnerable, like a child not knowing who to trust, but there was something familiar, something so very trustworthy about this human. He seemed like a friend whom she had known once upon a time, but had lost touch with. She wanted to know him again. She wanted this vision to be true. She desperately wanted it. It was joyous, warm, peaceful, and full of _Life_.

"Come home to me, Yrel. Take my hand." Jeshua told her extending his brutally scarred hand and wrist to her, and then she understood in that moment, it was no mere mortal who was calling her to return, it was the Holy Light himself calling to her gently like a parent to his child.

"I've… I've done horrible things. I've..." she began to confess to him the atrocities she had done, realizing that she had done them in the Light's name.

"There is no darkness I cannot penetrate." he told her gently in response. "Take my hand, drink from my cup, and let me fill you once more."

_The Holy Light is personally calling _me_? The Light wants _me_ back? Is this real?_ She wondered at it.

He stood there patiently, waiting, his hand outstretched ready to take hers should she respond. She looked past him to her sister and mentor once more, and beyond them to Durotan and Draka whose deaths had weighed on her conscience since they had happened. She did not know how they were there, she did not know why. It defied everything she had been taught and believed about the Light and how it worked, but she knew for certain somehow that they _were_ there in that Light filled place, in that time which seemed timeless. She wanted to join them. She wanted to be there with them.

She took his hand, and her vision filled with Light. Suddenly, she was returned to the Anguish Fortress. The sun had risen above the horizon. Golmash still stood next to her, his eyes were closed as if in prayer, and his hand still remained gently, comfortingly upon her shoulder. She must have been standing there with him for at least an hour, she realized, and he had not moved, but stood by her side praying for her the entire time. The Orc who had called her "family" had not abandoned her.

Her soul felt… She tried to find a word for it. It was like a great darkness, a great heaviness which had lain on her for decades had been lifted and she felt… free. There was a peace, a joy which filled her and wouldn't stop flowing as it continued to run throughout her destroying what remained of the shadows which had previously taken her.

"Golmash?" She spoke the Orc's name.

He opened his eyes at the sound of his name and looked at his "aunt." He smiled broadly as he said, "Yrel, I see the Light in your eyes."

"I saw… I saw the Light himself. I saw our world full of life. I saw my sister, and Velen, and..." She tried describing what she saw to him.

"I know. I saw it too. It's coming." Golmash replied. "Andrew placed his hand on me and showed me what was to come as well. I saw _him_ too. That was when I took the cup which he offered."

"He told me to take the cup." Yrel remembered. "What is it?"

"Andrew called it the cup of Jeshua's pact. We must all take it if we are to see the world which he showed you and I." Golmash told her.

As he was speaking, he reached into a bulging pack which he carried which she had not noticed before now. In his massive Orc hand he withdrew a small metal goblet, and a bottle filled with a blood red liquid. He placed the cup on the cursed altar, opened the bottle and poured some of its contents into the goblet. Then he intoned a short prayer and passed his hand over it, invoking Jeshua's name. As he did, she could see a small flash of Light pass between his hand and the cup.

"As Andrew explained to me," Golmash told her, "on the night before he was murdered, Jeshua sat down with his emissaries, took an ordinary cup of wine and prayed over it. When he did that, he placed something of himself, his essence perhaps into the wine and told them that this wine was the blood of a new pact he was making with them and with everyone who drank from it. Andrew said that everyone who drinks from it is joined to Jeshua, their two lives becoming one. I have drunk from this cup willingly. Andrew showed me how to pray and offer it, and now I offer it to you, my friend."

With that, he took the cup between his huge, male Orc fingers and offered it to Yrel to drink. She took it from him and pressing it to her lips, drank deeply. She then passed it back to Golmash who finished it off.

When the wine hit her lips, immediately she sensed another presence, another mind and heart flooding her own soul, joining to it. She gasped at what was happening within her. Beyond the joy and peace of the Light she felt… she felt _loved_, she felt welcome, she felt as though she had come _home_.

Two days later…

_Hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of points of Light began rising from the surface of Draenor. Each one of them had been a living, mortal being just seconds before. Each one of them had been a man, a woman, or a child; an Orc, a Draenei, an Ogre who had taken Jeshua's cup after riders, hundreds of them, Priests and Paladins of the Light, both Orc and Draenei, had gone across the planet's surface from Frostfire Ridge to Nagrand to Shadowmoon Valley to Gorgrond, bringing Jeshua's story and his pact to as many people as would listen and accept it. _

_When the last point of light had left the planet's surface, a great rift in space and time had opened up and for a few moments there seemed to be two Draenors in opposition to one another, mirror images of the same world, one a broken husk and the other dying all the same. And then a powerful wave of energy rippling across the created universe from a point far, far distant from there, Holy Light amplified by exponential orders of magnitude entwined with powerful arcane energies, slammed into the two worlds bringing them together, rearranging, repairing, healing, and merging them into a single blue and green paradise world. At the same time it brought with it other points of light which had also risen from the other Draenor and merged them with their counterparts, healing and making whole what had been unnaturally broken in two by a demonic invasion, and the selfish act of one who wanted to be a conqueror._

Yrel found herself standing in a blue green field next to Golmash and another Orc whom she recognized, but now appeared much younger than the last time she saw him only what seemed like moments before. To the north were hills teeming with bright blues and greens, wild elekks roamed freely, and the air was fresh and clean, free from the sickly, sour stench which had permeated her world. She could see it, but much more she could _feel_ it. There was no death here. There was no shadow. The darkness which had festered in the world of her birth had been destroyed and would not be returning.

She turned around and around trying to take it all in. Just as in the vision she had been shown, there was no sun in the sky, only a perpetual golden white Light which bathed everything in its glory. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to dance. She wanted to shout for joy at what had happened.

Draenor was healed. Draenor was whole again. Just as Jeshua had promised her.

"Yrel?!" She heard a familiar woman's voice, one she had not heard in decades call to her from across the field.

"Samaara?" Yrel responded, almost not believing it as she turned in the direction of the voice. "Samaara!" She then repeated, shouting in surprise as she started off in a dead run towards the waiting arms of her older sister.

It was a brand new day, an eternal day which would never fall to night again as the Kingdom of Light came to pass.


End file.
